The ISIS TT16

“My brother Julian Usborne died recently, and I am trying to put together a private-circulation book about him.”

EDITORIAL

Peter Usborne is one of the many people who reached out to us this term to enquire about the magazine’s archives.

Peter asked us to help him find an article, published in The ISIS in 1963, about his late brother. We loved reading about Julian, who it seems achieved notoriety during his time at Oxford. The satire was written up as a mock-tribunal in which Mr. Usborne is tried by the Junior Proctor. The Junior Proctor claims that “the peace of this ancient and loyal university has been continually troubled by the irresponsible behaviour of one man,” who was charged with “printing and distributing” one thousand counterfeit tickets for St. John’s and Trinity’s Commemoration Ball, “breaking and entering into the premises of newspaper Cherwell , and abducting some twelve hundred copies of the newspaper,” and turfing Trinity’s JCR with grass from Balliol’s lawn. When called upon, The ISIS functions as a sort of memory-bank. Stories like Julian’s are lost gems.

The ISIS has always been, and remains, in some sense, a community, and its archives are the memorial of an ongoing and shared project. From the clothes strewn about Victoria Square in Athens, the lost whales of Jaywick Sands and the furtive sipping of moonshine in a vacated apartment in Shiraz, the pieces in this magazine are a shared testament to human lives and experiences. When we called out to students to write 500 words or fewer in response to Falstaff’s immortal charge, “Lord, how this world is given to lying,” we were delighted to see Shakespeare’s words in such new colours, to see how they could be refracted through the lenses of different people and places.

We’ve chosen to arrange the magazine in different sections, each of which contains its own micro-narrative.

In doing so, we have tried to respond to new ways of reading and accessing news and stories. This edition is full of gems, and we encourage you to dip in and out of it. We hope there’s something in here that catches your eye.

FINTAN CALPIN & CHRISTIAN HILL

THE ISIS EDITORS DEPUTY EDITORS

(FICTION) SUB-EDITORS

CREATIVE DIRECTOR CREATIVES BROADCASTING DIRECTOR BROADCASTING TEAM

EVENTS DIRECTORS EVENTS TEAM MARKETING DIRECTOR BUSINESS MANAGER BUSINESS TEAM

OSPL CHAIR MANAGING DIRECTOR FINANCE DIRECTOR SECRETARY DIRECTORS

Christian Hill Fintan Calpin Eleanor Biggs Jacob Lee Lulu Smyth Liv Constable-Maxwell Rosie Collier, Samuel Dunnett, Rosanna Hildyard, Melissa Hinkley, Neil Suchak, Laura Whetherly, Alice Wilcock Nathan Caldecott Kate Elizabeth Miller, Indigo Wilde, Rachel Wilson Persis Love Grace Linden, Ruby O’Grady, Una O’Sullivan, Max Reynolds, Georgia Robson, Niloo Sharifi Sophie Aldred, Jessica Yung Leo House, Hannah-Lily Lanyon, Izzy Taylor Marianna Hunt Ed Manuel Vincent Chabany-Douarre, Chris Liang

Steven Spisto Josh McStay Tom Metcalf Pernia Price Harriet Bull, Mack Grenfell, Tom Hall, Oliver Johnson, Helen Stevenson, Robert Walmsley

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BLUE Grave Talk Katherine Cowles And All I Do Is Eat Adham Smart Victoria Viatorum Ben Eills Drowning Sam Dunnett Body of Evidence K Erickson

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RED CONTENTS

Lost Whales Grace Linden On Jaywick Sands Katherine Cowles A Small Island Slowly Sinking (or) Things Fall Apart Leo House Telford John Stephens Take Nothing But Photographs, Leave Nothing But Footprints Tara Doolabh Punny Business Rosanna Hildyard Day In The Life Of A Northerner Rosie Collier Assemble George Grylls

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YELLOW Tahrir Square Joshua Hillis Over A Week with Jean-Paul Mulot Jacob Lee A Beginners Guide: How To Depict India Abhisvara Sinha Curtain Poem / Alpha State Dominic Hand Ten Days in Tehran Tara Roshan Off-Foot Emanuele Biaslol Little Women Fanfiction Jayme Kusyk

34 37 40 42 44 48 52

500 Lord, How This World Is Given To Lying Not Untrue and Not Unkind Tom Ball Nineteen With Child Sarah Van Cleave Lies My Parents Told Me Luke Bull The League of Minor Dissapointments Emma Levin

56 57 58 59 60

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GRAVE

TALK

CAN YOU I M A G I N E HOW HARD IT IS TO GET A D E A D BODY INTO SKINNY JEANS?

I’m talking to Liz Rober ts, an unapologetic murder mystery enthusiast and a funeral director at my local family-run parlour.

“BURY ME IN MY FINEST PYJAMAS, THAT’S MY ONLY WISH. AND DON’T LET THE MEN IN THE OFFICE SEE ME.” Liz has been working in the funeral service for nine years now, and is one of a rare breed of professionally fulfilled forty-somethings. With her traditional top hat and double-breasted jacket hanging proudly in the wardrobe, her career illustrates a recent shift in an industry long dominated by men, the woman’s role largely confined to office work and arrangement rooms. Liz is young and trendy and looks nothing like one of the many miserly undertakers that haunt Dickensian novels. Far

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KATHERINE

COWLES

from being a pale-faced man in an office clogged with creaky doors and cobwebs, she is a mother, drawn relatively late in life to an industry into which most are born, trading a company car and corporate job at Tesco for hearses and cremation.

Liz is keen to dispel the many myths surrounding her profession and the funeral industry at large. She confirms that ashes in a casket are not just anybody’s, that coffins are never reused, that she doesn’t spend half her time plying gold from dead people’s molars.

The stuff about stiffies, though, is bona fide information. She tells me that a big par t of being a good funeral director is simply working with “total military precision at all times,” whether you’re arranging a death cer tificate, booking a horse and carriage, or painting the nails of a 90-year-old corpse. But there’s also the very human side of things, that element of compassion so essential to an industry that trades with people at their rawest and most desperate.

A lot of what it means to be a funeral director, she attests, is the ability to say, “This is really shit. Come and give me a cuddle and we can talk about headstones later.”

Far from feeding some morbid fascination, Liz gives me the impression that working with the dead is an eternally rewarding line of work. She tells me it’s “an honour and a privilege” to be able to care for somebody’s loved one at one of the few moments they are powerless to do so themselves, and the genuine gratitude of clients lets her know that funeral directors do more than just provide a service. Liz boasts a devoted fan

club with an average age of 87, and jokes about the cohort’s newest member, a client who had recently asked her to dye his late mother’s hair for him in tribute to their lifelong tradition.

“So there I am, hunched over this corpse with a bottle of Nice ‘n Easy going, ‘Is the water alright for you there, love? Where did you say you’re off to, again?’” It strikes me that her philosophy in life, as in death, is that a sense of humour never hurt anybody. But when I ask her if it ever feels wrong capitalising on death, she directs the question of moral ambiguity towards the bigger co-operative funeral houses. At these parlours, Liz tells me, a commission is handed out for bigger headstones and mahogany caskets. “But that’s still more of an American way of death,” she says and assures me that whereas her independent house arranges about 370 funerals a year, the local co-op must only trade about a tenth of that. She cringes even at the idea of using the word “sell” at work.

Even in a society that equips us with rituals for death and grieving, the topic of human mortality hardly provides suitable dinner-table conversation. Not around children, at least, and certainly not around the dying. But rather than any kind of shock-effect, Liz puts our stilted discourse down to fear and superstition: a pre-paid funeral is taken as a jinx rather than a clever financial investment, “as if talking about how to lay your terminally ill granny to rest is really going to be the thing that bumps her off.” I wonder whether this has any impact on the funeral process itself, and Liz tells me that often to her disbelief clients won’t even be able to answer the first question on a funeral director’s list: will it be burial or cremation? “People are bad at discussing the practicalities of dying,” she says. “They do that bit about sticking dad in a cardboard box, but you can see them practically squirming when I tell them that can be arranged.”

It’s a shame, Liz says, because she rather likes the cardboard casket, with its rope handles and wild-flower display.

If only there were as many Pinterest boards for ‘rustic funerals’ as there are for weddings, I say, and wonder briefly about a potential market for jam-jar urns. Liz tells me, rather, that funeral trends are usually governed by recent episodes of Eastenders.

Like many others in the funeral industry, Liz is trying to transform our stiff-lipped approach to the business

of dying. She’s preparing to set up her own Death Café, a place where local villagers will have the chance to come together and discuss death over a cup of tea and cake. Far from some conference for prying existentialists, Death Cafés have garnered worldwide attention as safe spaces in which total strangers can open up about anything from personal experiences of loss to fears of funerals or the physical embarrassment of dying, with all its noises and smells. Liz mentions Grave Talk, a café space recently launched by the Church of England. Whether or not you believe in kingdom come, the idea is to refamiliarise people with death in an age where it is less, for want of a better word, lived, with fewer of us dying at or during bir th, or before reaching adulthood, or of incurable disease.

W H E R W O U L Y O M O S L I K T D I E

E D U T E O ?

To get over the initial awkwardness, Grave Talkers use cue cards as a stimulus for conversation.

They ask questions like ‘What would you write on your epitaph?’ and ‘Where would you most like to die?’ “There was this incredible honesty among strangers,” Liz remarks before rushing off to her murder mystery night. “It’s hard to imagine, but we spoke for hours about the first time we’d seen dead bodies as if that were a completely normal way to spend an afternoon.”

If death in Christian and humanist tradition is sanitised by the refrigeration and beautification of the recently dead, Liz hopes that coffee clubs like these will provide a space in which to lay things bare. It’s all about the simple significance of creating a transparent dialogue around one of the only two certainties in life: death and taxes.

And in light of recent events, it looks as if one might be more certain than the other.

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ADHAM

SMART

AND ALL I DO IS EAT I go to write and all I do is eat; my fingers find the food and like the way it feels so much I sometimes think I’ll push it under my nails so they can have a taste of what leaves their faces g reasy.

And when I play tennis I don’t play tennis but eat anything everything clay and Astroturf and your horrible biscuits, I shovel it all in with my racket hands and they never seem to hold enoug h to satisfy my mouth which is big enoug h for countries to be founded in.

Or maybe I find a drink of something and I’m pouring it down my throat like a sculptor filling a mould with gallons and gallons of floury plaster, filling myself with whatever I can lay my hundred hands on, music even, I put it on and let it fill my head like a gardener filling a bucket with slugs and snails till they’re so densely packed the weig ht begins to crack shells and suffocate those at the bottom, I can’t get enoug h, you think I’m not serious but I can’t get serious enoug h, in my dreams I’m eating trees from leaf to root or giving head with the pitiful hunger of an animal in the deser t, burying my face between someone’s legs so deep that I can see the origins of mankind and softly desperately gulping away like those aw ful eels called gulper eels.

I’m addicted to my open mouth, I find stuff and I put it in my face, my mouth when empt y is thinking about being filled with anything food drink sex music Tinder smoke kissing talking anything, literally anything consumable I see I shove it in my mouth and I don’t care how many teeth I lose. I saw a film of a farm where geese were piled hig h and men stuck a machine called the hand of god in their little long throats and pumped them with g rain till they could barely stand, and this is tor ture, so why althoug h there is g rain dripping out of my nose and ears and my hundred hands in bloody twisted knots do I still feel empt y and want you to fill me fill me I’m a sewer waiting for all the shit in the municipalit y to come coursing down the drains into my hung ry hung ry eager wide wide open yes yes mouth fill me fill me fill me fill me oh teach me how to eat myself away and maybe then I’ll rest.

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VI C TORIA VIATORUM BEN

EILLS

I FIRST MET MARIA ON FRIDAY.

She stood in the street and talked at me in hurried Greek, and then when I didn’t reply, accused me of ignoring her.

“You speak Greek! I heard you at the kiosk.”

Being ignored was a problem that she seemed to face a lot, dressed in a castoff T-shir t, with long grey hair swept back, standing with her shabby boxes in Victoria Square, Athens at two in the morning. But my Greek, like that of most people in this dir ty quad, comprised only a few words that I’d learnt since arriving several weeks ago.

VICTORIA SQUARE. The focal point of Europe, “symbolic of the endeavour, hope and determination that has spurred the continent’s biggest migration of people since the second world war,” a British newspaper had read days before. “If you go to Iran, you’ll hear people speak about Victoria Square.” Lodging in the square, I order café hellenico at the Albanian coffee shop, oranges from the greengrocer, souvlaki from the Romanian–Greek in that small, quiet place across the square.

The chairs are arrayed outside tavernas and restaurants, ready for the European tourists, the life-blood of modern Greece, but currently vacant. Food is periodically distributed by patchwork charities and public-spirited Athenians.

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“Look at these people,” Maria said, “ m i s e r y. T h i s i s G r e e c e t o d a y. ” I n her youth, Maria studied in England a n d w a s a f i l m d i r e c t o r. S h e s p e a k s q u i c k l y, n e r v o u s l y g l a n c i n g a r o u n d .

Her first love was Budapest, and her film and photographs were stolen in Czechoslovakia, she tells m e d i s t r a c t e d l y. B e n d i n g o v e r, s h e examines a piece of clothing left on the ground between the human forms, and picks it up, satisfied there is life left in it. “When they [the migrants] go they just leave their things here. They don’t care about the next people. That’s the one thing that makes me angry a b o u t t h e m . ” E v e r y d a y, s h e t a k e s a l l these boxes of clothes home to wash them and then brings them back for the new wave of refugees that will i n e v i t a b l y a p p e a r t o m o r r o w.

In the afternoon sun, a man walks out in front of a car with a bundle of khat, the mildly addictive plant you chew to cure excessive productivity. A driver stops, gets out, and opens the back of her car. She is surrounded immediately by the asser tive and the enterprising, and hands out food to the young men who are always at the front. The game here is to get something, which is quickly stashed at one’s back, or thrown to a friend, and at once to try for another. The old men and women gaze on forlornly; I go home.

“ LO O K AT T H E S E P E O P L E ” “ M I S E R Y, T H I S I S G R E E C E TO DAY ” Greece is ill-suited to bear the brunt of the crisis, still suffering deeply from the effects of the financial collapse of 2009.

Disillusionment with the Tsipras government is widespread among young people, not simply because it hasn’t reached a solution, but because it is thought that there is no solution. Not one of these travellers want to stay here, I am told. They want to be in the gold-paved streets of Germany or milk-andhoney England.

The volunteers of the Dutch charity VluchtelingenWerk Nederland, armed with reflective jackets and backpacks full of plastic-wrapped women’s tights, speak Dutch and English. I meet a British lady who speaks Arabic and Farsi, but she found volunteering as a translator at the por t of Piraeus “just too chaotic”. The Salvation Army is here too, and communication at times breaks down. Here it sinks to clumsy gesticulation: raise your hand to your mouth and the concept of eating is communicated to almost anybody. Put your hand on your bladder and a nearby chain coffee shop will direct you to their toilet facilities. But only women and children are allowed: they don’t want the men.

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When I see Maria again a few nights later, her voice is forced and thin.

She says she hasn’t slept since I met her three nights ago, but she seems completely undiminished in her effor ts. I’ll help tonight.

We walk around, picking up clothes and food and talking to the refugees.

Some of them think she’s crazy and tell me so, but others are grateful for her redistributive effor ts. She knows where different families sit, and what they need: two girls want new tights; an old man is hungry; the toddler needs milk. Sometimes we have to guard Maria’s trolley and the dir ty boxes: “the one with the red hat is a thief,” she says. Her eyesight is bad, and she needs me to pick out edible food and clothes that aren’t too badly soiled. We slowly make our way around the square.

Hitting your children is illegal in Greece, and the police will take them away if it’s reported. One Afghan family know this and are scared of Maria for this reason. “The father hits the children,” she says.

“Will the father hit her again?” Maria asks me.

“Yes.” She seems to agree, but adds, with some amount of hope: “I don’t think the mother will.”

An older boy stands with a narrow stick and the rest of them sit in a circle of baggage and thick blankets. Maria picks up a football and rolls it to one of the girls who kicks it back, before she is swatted with the stick. Maria takes the stick, breaks it in half, and goes to the mother. She bows down deeply to her with hands together, a gesture she says is appropriate and will be understood as a sign of female solidarity. Her gesture seems foreign and feels ridiculous in this present moment. A crowd forms, and she asser ts that I am her husband. The crowd becomes wary, although somewhat suspicious of the decades age-gap between me and this eccentric woman. Eventually the family get up, wrap their belongings in blankets, and escape us.

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We continue around the square to a bench with two fat Greek men on it. She introduces me to one, and it’s while I’m shaking his hand that I see his crystal-studded belt and a young Afghan boy. The man holds his small hand in his larger one, stroking it.

“They pay 5 euros to fuck,” explains Maria.

O N LY

After hours in the square, Maria has lost all strength. We slowly gather the assorted clothes and detritus together, strapped in boxes to the trolley, or in large reinforced bags with polythene wrapped around the handles to stop them cutting into our hands. We leave the square, with its families asleep under blankets, the charity workers gone home, the Algerian local with his dog talking to the older Greek woman who Maria says wants to prove herself by getting a younger man.

Policemen on the corner still lean on their plastic riot shields for which I could imagine no possible use.

THERE IS NO VICTORY HERE, M I T I G AT I O N A N D C O M P R O M I S E THE EDGE OF EUROPE

Her swearing feels purposeful and political.

In her youth vulgarity was probably a form of dissent, and this is the way she uses it today, devoid of the crassness it carries back home. Athens is “shit”. The police are “shits”. The old man sleeping in the doorway had cancer and has a bag tied to his leg, “from his intestines.”

“Colostomy?”

“Yes,” agrees Maria, “shit.”

AT

Dragging everything from Victoria to Athen's anti-authoritarian area of Exarcheia, Maria points at buildings telling me when they were built and who lives there. This is where she was born, and she knows this area like nobody else I meet. Occasionally, her trolley falls over and the boxes full of clothes and paraphernalia spills onto the street. Taxis slow down hopefully, then speed away when they can make us out properly. “Maria,” I said, “we look ridiculous with all this stuff.”

“Say it again!”

“We look ridiculous with all this stuff!”

I think of temporary ceasefires, the people of Greece and their hospitality to the people landing on their beaches, and Maria awake in the early hours of Monday morning, unable to carry on from tiredness. There is no victory here, only mitigation and compromise at the edge of Europe.

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DROWNING SAM

DUNNETT

they called it drowning in the Edwardian backrooms in the party political street fights in the hesitant doorstep complaints We’re Drowning We’re Full A Flood A Flood in the purple pamphlets the imaginary submersion of identity the make-believe swamping of primary school places the manufactured tightening of chests they called it drowning because that’s what it was when halfmade boats fell apart and the bodies bumped together and rolled over each other on the surface of the sea sun on the water sun on dead faces the Elsewhere mouths filled with European salt Go Home Go Home they were trying but the wood and rust keeping them from water was temporary and malicious as lies and they will call it drowning because that’s how it will feel when the lives of their victims press in on their nostrils in between tabloid articles and policy drafts when the receiving ends of Tough Decisions light up in sun which glints sharp in clouded minds (for a second) when they allow it to come and (for a second) cover them in the dreams of others (for a second) and in pain burst from banks on council estates in job centres in European salt (for a second at first but then it enters the lungs) because evil’s not something you try at people die because this sceptered isle’s a cockroach we’re armoured.

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Nonetheless, she had captured it: his own voice, admitting to raping her.

It was more than I ever had. Almost exactly a year earlier, when I had been a victim of the same crime, I’d had nothing so damning. I had only felt the haunted and barren ground inside me where a gentler and more trusting par t of my nature had once resided, but had that day been forcibly removed and taken from me forever.

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EVIDENCE K ERICKSON 12

SHE HAD A TAPE R E C O R D I N G In it, his voice was muffled, slurred from a night of heavy drinking, and at times inaudible from the rustling of the coat pocket in which she’d hidden the phone during their last conversation together. In it, her voice was noncommittal, quiet, deferential, almost apologetic.

In the days after my own attack I’d searched my room, the sheets of my bed, and the external features of my body for some trace of proof that I could use to defend myself with, but found them all treacherously unblemished.

There had been no evidence aside from my own barest whisper of a human voice, quiet and uncorroborated.

I had felt that if only I could have ripped my own body into pieces and offered up the necrotic and gangrenous tissue of suffering within for all the eyes of the world to see, I could have had the evidence I needed. But I couldn’t. So I had nothing.

But she had a tape recording.

She was a student of mine, a barelymore-than child whose care had been entrusted to me for the brief window of a summer study abroad programme.

Looking at her as she told me her story late one night last August, three days before she was due to return home, she seemed like a poltergeist. She was a mouthpiece of my own memory, possessed with the words I’d never spoken aloud. If I had opened my diaries from the year before, I would have found her words written verbatim in my own hand amidst seemingly more innocent observations of kites, jackdaws, magpies: an augury of black feathers, erratic flight patterns, and— as I would discover over the following weeks and months in the course of my own life—dark fates.

We sat together in paralytic silence.

She lay with her head in my lap and I stroked her hair, and we listened to the gambol of crows outside my bedroom window. I watched them and felt that if I could read the signs as a soothsayer might, they would have foretold the same future for her as they had done for me, as they have done for thousands of other women in our place.

She mumbled quietly about forgetting what had happened and moving on. I didn’t look her in the eye but watched a black wing flutter past the open sill. I didn’t say what I knew to be true: that she would never forget, that she would look back on that night as the end of a version of herself forever. The birds wheeled away into the night, and it became very dark.

Then she revealed the recording, and I thought that everything had changed. In my mind, that iPhone voice memo was a resurrection stone. It was the ironclad verification we needed to deliver her the justice she deserved— that I felt I deserved too, and had denied myself in my own failure to find the evidence I thought I needed. Suddenly, I was pressing her to repor t. I went to the CC television records in the house we shared and found a fragment of footage of them leaving together. I contacted other people who might have seen them that night to lend substance to her story.

The night before she was set to leave she came to me again, and I laid everything I had found before her. It was a fragmentary corps, dismembered segments that I hoped might combine together with my prodding to make a whole. I stood before her like a necromancer, willing these chunks of flesh and memory back to renewed life so they might seek vengeance on her behalf.

But for reasons she never voiced aloud, she didn’t feel it was enough. The next day, she deleted the recording. She finished her programme and went home. I never saw her again, and nothing ever came of it.

The Frankenstein-like tangle of collected proof I had assembled wreaked no havoc, raised no hell, sought no justice.

It returned to the disparate pieces from which I had gathered it, and fell silent. I was left only to watch birds and wonder: on the path her fate would take, how it might converge or diverge with my own story, and what final piece of evidence I might have gathered that would have been good enough to change its outcome.

We are often told in cases such as ours that it was not rape, but merely regret after the fact.

At first, I didn’t have much to say to her. I could only nod along and wonder, dully, where young girls are taught this identical script of contrition, of selferasure and deference, that we had both fallen back on without second thought. She didn’t want to repor t the crimethat had occurred, and I had no force with which to convince her otherwise; after all, neither had I.

We are often told in cases such as ours that it was not rape, but merely regret after the fact. We are told that we are obfuscators, trying to avoid facing a decision we wish we hadn’t made. I have experienced rape, and I have experienced regret, and I know the difference between them. But it was only on that night in August as she left my room and vanished from my life forever that I experienced the pain of both at once.

In a frantic twenty-four-hour period, I grabbed at the turbulent air between us with both hands, pulling every thread of information toward me that I could.

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lO sT W H A GRACE

LINDEN

that these forests are inside us and how to walk through them, since the ways are narrow through the trees: now and then the wind, as translucent as are some moments of pain, rises and causes the leaves to whisper: even some to fall – do you know how close by you came to me, and when I wasn’t even there? only today another whale was laid on Wainfleet sand: out of water, her inner rooms caved in – their high, fretted ceilings fell;

L E

only today I woke and the morning sun, which aches yet is perennial, was falling up above.

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FAR FROM THE GLAMOUR of Joey Essex and his Brentwood clique sits Clacton’s Jaywick Sands, officially the most deprived town in the UK. Jaywick Sands was once a thriving resor t on the coast of Essex, and Clacton once home to Billy Butlin’s second holiday camp: a romantic family dwelling with a boating lake, a miniature railway and a 6,000-person capacity at its height in the 1950s. Such is the Clacton depicted on the memory-sharing site butlinsmemories.com, a little trove of antique treasures dating back to a time when Britain’s coastal towns had pride of place on the holidaymaker’s top destinations list. Among other things, the website boasts the holiday village as the site of Cliff Richard’s professional debut: a 4-week residency in 1958, a time long before the Spanish Costas had dulled South East England’s shine.

Clacton’s success was also its downfall. When Butlin’s closed its gates in the early 80s and Thatcher’s administration saw unemployed Londoners moving into empty bed and breakfasts, the ritz of Jaywick Sands quickly began to fade. Today, 80% of Jaywick’s residents live on social benefits, and the town topped the national poverty league for the second time in 2015, ranking first for rates of unemployment, low income, disability and crime.

Among its better-known accolades, perhaps, is its claim to being UKIP’s first seat, with their sole elected MP the defected Tory, Douglas Carswell.

For my mother, Clacton now feels like a rather inglorious hometown.

But while it might be tempting to dwell on the decline and deprivation of the coastal area, any media space for Jaywick ‘pover t y-porn’ seems to have alread y been more or less saturated. Indeed, whi l e t he Teleg raph is b us y b illi n g the “noto r io u s” Jay wick B rook l an d s est ate as a “coastal s hant y town” , ver y litt le h as b een repor ted outs ide the local press about the recent signs of regeneration in the area.

O N J A Y W I C K S A N D S KATHERINE

COWLES

Brooklands, for example, was conceived as a seaside-escape for city dwellers in the early 20s, but by 1971 demolition was on the cards— until plans were defeated by local residents. Now, roads in the area are being properly resurfaced and the drainage system reconnected.

Essex County Council recently gave £5 million towards regeneration, while the government granted a special £10,000 fund to a newly established Coastal Community Team in 2015.

I spoke to Gill Elkins, Secretary of the Jaywick Community Forum, about the changes and challenges facing the town. The idea of the forum was to create a space in which members of the community could discuss issues of mutual concern, and I was eager for Gill to explain one council-backed project in par ticular: the Vision for Jaywick, an initiative published last December with the aim of kickstar ting regeneration in the area.

Gill is positive that the Vision will be able to achieve tangible regeneration, which means, above all, “a sustainable, flood resilient infrastructure” to protect against a very real flood risk in the area. Some m e m b e rs w i l l s t i l l b e a b l e to re m e m b e r t h e f l o o d o f 1 9 5 3 , i n w h i c h thir tyseven Jaywick villagers drowned.

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She mentions a recently successful project pushed forward by residents and members of the forum—the painting of the sea wall—which received Environmental Agency permission last month. “We hope that the painting will encourage some tourism,” she says, along with the Mar tello Tower Caravan Camp, “which has spent a lot of money on making itself bigger and better over the past few years.” And while there’s no longer a boating lake at the camp, there’s also no Cliff Richard, so it’s hardly all loss.

But change never comes without challenge. One of the main issues facing the local Council and the Forum is the new government social housing and rent policy, which has led to a shor tage in funding and new homes. Although the ultimate aim of the Forum is to promote “happy lives in a well-balanced society,” Gill is also aware that significant social issues may continue to choke regeneration in the area. I ask her whether mental health issues within the community might have anything to do with unemployment and pover ty in the area. “This is something that has been going on ever since I can remember,” she says, citing in par ticular the relocation of ex-offenders from London and Essex prisons to Clacton’s “bedsit land.” This has been par tly blamed for the increase in drug and alcoholrelated problems in the area, and though many local charities and agencies are attempting to alleviate these issues, a long-standing history of crime, abuse and depression is hard to shake.

Cue Danny Sloggett and the Jaywick Sands Happy Club. A famously vocal resident, Danny set up the Happy Club earlier this year, and its Facebook g roup already has 3,000 members. The club meets each week and begins with a few rounds of poker, Scrabble or Monopoly, then moves on to discussions between communit y and council over cups of tea and coffee. Alcohol and smoking are banned. “I invented the club because I’m fed up of people saying there’s no happiness and there’s no choice,” Danny tells me, “I thoug ht I’d make a club that proves other wise.” Danny himself has lived in the town from the age of 10. He is passionate about the nearby railway and the fact that all of the road names on his side of town—Morris, Bentley and Sunbeam Avenues—pay homage to a seaside racetrack that was never built.

18

Danny is a keen vlogger and has been posting ‘Sloggett Vision’ videos online for several years.

Since October he has been filming for Channel 5’s Benefits by the Sea documentary, but felt concerned that the director’s skewed cuts and edits did not present Jaywick accurately.

His ambition now is to make a sixpar t series of his own, showing the “real” Jaywick in a happier light. His Happy Club has already held several popular community events, including Jaywick’s Got Talent and the town’s first dog show, for which all costs came out of Danny’s own pocket, and he has been instrumental in the introduction of new CCT V cameras and one-way systems in town.

“People shout ‘happiness’ and ‘love’ at me in the street,” he says, “In restaurants as far as Chelmsford, they shout my catchphrase ‘shine o n ’ . I ’ m l i ke J i m C a re y. ” When I ask him about what he envisages for the future of the town, he says “I’ll be m a y o r, f o r o n e , a n d I ’ l l g e t a park bench when I die.”

Before hanging up, Danny enthusiastically invites me to Jaywick for a guided tour of the town in all its “energ y and shine.” H is optimism is infectious, and his vision for Jaywick seems indestructible. He looked for ward to seeing himself on Channel 5 that evening, as well as a conference with the council the following day, before—of course— the Happy Club meeting at the local church on Thursday nig ht. As the oldest building in Jaywick, Danny thinks the venue has a symbolic resonance: a sig n that Jaywick isn’t just burnt-out buildings and rubble.

“There’s a plaque up for the thir tyseven who died in the Nor th Sea Floods,” he says, “I call it the Saint Paul’s of Jaywick.” In an effor t to close the distance between city and shore, it is possible to make out something of the spirit of Saint Paul’s in the Jaywick Sands Happy Club and its modest village church.

It feels less like an expression of what’s been lost, and more like a monument to identity and endurance.

A SMALL I S L A N D S L O W L Y S I N K I N G ( O R ) T H I N G S FALL APART LEO

HOUSE

Decemeber 3rd, 2015. It was just another day in Carlisle’s titanic McVitie’s factory—its industrial pride and joy. Britain’s most beloved biscuits were being baked and packed for delivery by vigilant workers—now measuring the perfect blend of custard and cream to be spread onto layers of vanilla biscuit, now spicing their ginger nuts, now marking their best-selling chocolate sandwiches with the iconic stamp: BOURBON. Business as usual.

But all the while, moist, extratropical air was gathering from the Caribbean.

Fluffy white clouds slowly twisted into menacing curves. Warning signals in BBC weather stations began to flicker red.

And then the heavens opened. Flash floods struck Carlisle, raging currents washing cream and crumbs into the cogs of the conveyor belts. Huge vats of biscuit dough toppled and cracked, spilling their sugary contents into waves of murky water. The factory’s state-of-the-ar t brick ovens were swamped five feet deep. Its digital operating systems fizzled and gave out, drowned in congealing chocolate.

Word got out fast. It was rumoured that the secret bourbon recipe—that sacred marriage of cocoa buttercream on darkchocolate biscuit—had been destroyed in the flood and lost forever. This, of course, was never publicised in the national media, for fear that the nation would descend into anarchy. Baked goods tycoon ‘United Biscuits’ released a transparently optimistic statement:

“We apologise if consumers are finding it difficult to get hold of some of our products and we are working hard at our Carlisle site to resume normal service as soon as possible.”

Nobody could have predicted how the situation would deteriorate. Just one month later, the government was forced to intervene. Peckish Britons swarmed at the Carlisle factory in disgruntled mobs and knocked at the gates. With their main factory in ruins and the secret bourbon recipe gone, the United Biscuit executives lost their nerve. They loaded their private jets with as many bourbons as their lackeys could carry and fled to the Bahamas.

The Prime Minister called a state of emergency, and in January the 2016 Baked Goods Rationing Act was forced through Parliament, granting each UK household a monthly allowance of: 1 ginger nut, 1 hob nob, 1 custard cream, ½ bourbon cream.

There were protests, strikes and riots, but eventually the stiff upper lip prevailed.

It’s now December 2017. As I write, I dunk my permitted half-bourbon into my tea, one corner at a time, and savour each moist, chocolatey nibble. Others, with families to provide for, prefer to grind the piece of biscuit into a fine powder and cook it with corn flour and water, to stretch out the precious bourbon flavour for as many as five hungry mouths.

Moonshiners have popped up all over t h e c o u n t r y. T h e y b a k e i n i n n e r - c i t y attics, with stolen equipment and experimental recipes. It’s easy to tell the difference between genuines and fakes; if not by the sickly sweetness and gritty texture, then by the hastily falsified trademark stamps: ‘BOURRBON’, ‘BOREBON’. There are reports of clandestine clubs in shady pockets of Soho selling genuine bourbons at £1000 per pack, where investment bankers and corrupt p o l i t i c i a n s g a t h e r, s u r r o u n d e d b y exotic dancers and buckets of tea.

But the biscuits won’t last. The milk has been spilt. The cookie is crumbling.

19

JOH N STEP H ENS

New developments in Randlay, with white screens around the derelict sites. We got a new community centre and shops, but the work seems and interminable, barriers these up been have since before I left.

St Quentin roundabout.

Telford has loads of roundabouts and the planners used to joke that whenever someone put their mug of tea down on a design and stained it that they would just put a roundabout in there to save making another plan.

20

The roof of Telford Shopping Centre.

Opened in 1973, it is still one of the largest indoor shopping centres in the UK. I took this photo from the roof of a new multistorey car park and I love how it looks from above. It is really Telford’s skyline.

The Queensway. This is a road going through the centre of town. I took the photo from a bridge to the railway station. Mr Jones, my old primary school headteacher, says that in the 1980s Telford was marketed as ‘the city of trees’ and that the banks of trees to him are an ‘invitation’ to drive.

21

Telford bus station.

Telford is very spread-out and I use buses all the time here.

Each small urban area is separated by fields and forests, so there is a strange mix of green and builtup landscapes.

Remains of a chemical factory.

The Friends of Telford Town Park dug this up a few years ago. It was part of the same chemical works as the chimney, processing slag into construction material and road surfaces.

22

MAY I ASK ALL CREATIVE TYPES

YOU

– the media houses, novelists, filmmakers and directors alike – if you were to capture India, what would you show? Confused? Don’t worry, here’s a guide that will win Do you need a guide that will win you you a our Booker, Pulitzer or Oscar award.?

Firstly, always depict India as two extremes. Either like Jodhpur, a pastoral paragon with Indian women draped in gossamer veils or like ‘Slumdog Millionaire-esque’ Mumbai, an overpopulated city in which slums, rape, prostitution, drugs, gangs, and not to forget - stark pover ty dominate. There are approximately 1200 kilometers between Jodhpur and Mumbai, but don’t get bogged down in the nuances; your viewers definitely won’t.

Yet, when it comes to the people,

Matheson House.

Here, I am standing where Asda used to be. Behind me is its shell, along with posters saying ‘Telford is changing.

Watch this space.’

Town centre from above. Even in the town centre there are wide roads and pavements: Telford was designed to accommodate a car-driving population from the beginning.

23

TARA

DOOLABH

URBAN OR

EXPLORATION, URBEX

as it has come to be known, is the rediscovery of manmade infrastructures, whether disused or decaying.

It’s the liberation of public spaces abandoned by time and necessity.

IT

IS

TRESPASSING.

Urban explorers or ‘place hackers’ across the world have formed collectives that under take expeditions to abandoned power plants and asylums, or to scale buildings and bridges. One expedition included descending down a manhole into a former Second World War air-raid shelter, now a telephone exchange, which had been built by the government and removed from maps. Their narrative of exploration is inspired by the contours of a skyline and accompanying it is a linguistic underworld of acronyms and coded references to ‘TOADS’ (Temporary, Obsolete, Abandoned or Derelict Spaces) and ‘cracking’ (discovering a new location). Having memorised the blueprints of a structure, they infiltrate, photograph and leave. The calling card for all self-respecting urban explorers with a par ticular penchant for heavily backlit por traits of man and cityscape is the ‘hero shot’, the urban explorer towering over their conquered structure.

24

T A K E N O T H I N G B U T PHOTOGRAPHS ng an Urb ex is abo ut coll ecti visi spa ce few a ing alis mun com , nce erie exp that , in hav e end eav oure d to reac h but uld be sho e, hav who e thos the min d of n. But ava ilab le for pub lic con sum ptio atio n or the very real risk of inca rcer e can be a inju ry is all thei r own , and ther itec ture . cos t for inva ding off- limi t arch a visi ting Whe n Brad ley Gar rett , nowrd and the Oxfo at te ocia rese arch ass r, beg an UK’s fore mos t urba n exp lore exp lora tion writ ing a thes is on urba n , he join ed as par t of his Geo grap hy PhD (LCC ), the Lon don Con soli dati on Crew eha cke rs plac of unit ded ban -dis a now amb itiou s com mitt ed to the mos t e onli ne hug a with s, ade urba n crus he has rs othe with g follo win g. Alon timi sati on bee n resp ons ible for the legi ours as of urba n exp lora tion end eav urba n For rese arch . ethn ogra phic ia, Gar rett dem aca and n atio stig inve four time s. rd Sha the led sca itly illic has duri ng sted arre e wer LCC The In 201 1, teen eigh all n dow k trac to a proj ect

L E A V E N O T H I N G B U T FOOTPRINTS of London Underground’ s ‘ghost’ stations, and were shor tly charged again after photographs from their Shard expedition emerged on their blog.

The attempted prosecution that followed was, I suspect, not in the name of the £25 admission fee to witness the much adver tised ‘View From The Shard’ but the result of a growing anxiety about the ownership of public spaces. They may treat London like a living Monopoly board, working their way through its landmarks, from King’s Cross to the Water Works, but what these explorers are resisting is the commodificat ion of the urban landscape.

It would seem that when our experience of disused stations is contained within the fantasy world of James Bond, like that of Granborough Road in Skyfall, it appears as a thrilling insight into London’s underbelly. But

when these spaces are actually explored and viewed by the public it is treated as a threat to security, an evasion of our carefully crafted surveillance culture. While the reality of the LCC’s gatherings in underground tube stations is riddled with sewage and rats, their very alliance, self-styled aliases, and the circumstances of their arrests can’t help but seem glamorous. Though having your passpor t confiscated in first class and being handcuffed on the tarmac at Heathrow as Bradley has hardly screams outlaw, the violent raid of his home and seizure of his PhD notes reeks of the insecurity of the British Transpor t Police when faced with a small but high profile network of urban ramblers.

In the same generation as WikiLeaks and the Panama Papers, ‘place-hacking’ seems a medieval form of social rebellion. When you consider that Garrett used his knowledge of an underground network of steam tunnels to notify Thames Water of leaks in their system, the accusation of criminality wears thin.

In fact, with the increasing privatisation of public spaces for redevelopment, the exploration of closed off areas and the rights to free transit in an urban landscape are as contentious as ever.

In the vein of a truly modern ‘threat’, the greater the perceived potential for the sharing of information within Urbex groups, the more concerned the authorities seem to be. Members of the London Consolidation Crew were granted bail on the condition that there was to be no more communication between them.

25

When I asked Bradley Garrett about the state of Urbex and its future, he replied that in the past five years it’s course had undergone a kind of mutilation, and there were two things responsible: corporate sponsorship and new social media platforms. There is, of course, an inescapable element of selfpromotion in Urbex. Photographs from the expeditions are frequently collated into books: Garrett is releasing his second on the topic later this year. He linked me a YouTube video that he described as the “breaking point” in corporations’ exploitation of urban exploration. It was a video of two Russian explorers Vadim Makhorov and Vitaliy Raskalov climbing, unsuppor ted, to dizzying, nauseating heights on the Shanghai Tower in China, the second tallest building in the world.

The video is undoubtedly thrilling, albeit in an uncomfor table way. But what frustrates Garrett is that two explorers, once held in high esteem by the global urban exploration community, had resor ted to garnering 52 million views through a feat that requires “no technical skill or photographic exper tise to produce.” Behind the GoPro and rough editing, all the footage achieves, in Garrett’s view, is highlighting the extraordinary dangers these two men were willing to expose themselves to in order to attract attention. This video, and others like it, became the source of a now ritualistic “exercise in bravado”, as Garrett calls it. My correspondence with Garrett made clear that the practice of urban exploration has splintered dramatically in the past few years.

26

For Gar rett and the LCC dis use d and aba ndo ned , exp lori ng was to und er tak e a sor t of stru ctu res to the city ’s ske leto n, and pilg rim age man y urb an exp lore rs stil l ope rate to this the n, how eve r, it has also end . Sin ce par t into a que st for spo nsoevo lved in rsh ip and soc ial me dia sta rdo m. The invo lved the gre ate r the mo re mo ney In Sep tem ber last yea r a risk s tak en.

Rus sian sch ool boy was 17 yea r-ol d to do jus t tha t, whi le takkill ed tryi ng off the sid e of a bui ldin g ing a self ie in Vol ogd a.

Gar rett wen t on to list the var iou s way s the urb an exp lora tion aes bee n hija cke d by bra nds , the tic had t-sh ir ts to soc ks: it has becran gin g from in the pow er of mar ket ing om e a less on like Ins tag ram . Gar rettvia pla tfor ms exp lain s: “th e cru x her e is tha t exp lori ng is sup pos ed to be abo ut bei ng inte rrog ate the rela tion shi pre sen t to the bod y and spa ce. Wh en p bet wee n you are in tha t zon e, you don ’t tak e unc alcu late d risk s bec aus e you are full y pre sen t”.

Reg rett abl y it is the pro mis e of spo nso rsh ip tha t enc our age s and dic tate s the out lan dis h exp lore rs now hop e pho tog rap hs to obt ain .

Gar rett lays res pon sib ility for this new bre ed of urb an with cor por atio ns, “mo st exp lora tion he say s, “are offe ring of whi ch” , for pro duc t pla cem ent in a pitt anc e are par tial ly to bla me pic s, and dea ths .” He lam ent s how for the se pro duc ed for Sna pch at the ima ges are pre sen ted with out or Fac ebo ok a spa tial con tex t. Qui ckly, we as bec om e des ens itis ed to an aud ien ce man dan glin g off a sky pho tos of a scr ape r and the risk s of suc h ven ture s, like the

endorsements, continue to spiral.

“Of course,” says Garrett, these images “slot right into neo-liberal corporate ideologies because they can appropriate the aesthetic without having to also relay the socio-political milieu of the image.” Appropriation is a great concern of Garrett’s but the death of urban exploration lies in its fabrication. Trespassing may not be a criminal offence but for TV and film production companies looking to capitalise on the popularity of Urbex through adver tising, they cannot legally promote it. Instead, they’re forced to try and recreate it. “It will be only a matter of time before they star t staging exploration,” Garrett comments, “which is the most deeply ironic thing I can imagine.”

For explorers like Bradley Garratt, the threat Urbex should pose is to our understanding of our own relationship with metropolitan structures; how we are channelled from place to place, quietly minding the gap, diligently or even unconsciously observing the restrictions imposed on us. The Shard’s commodification of a view, alongside branded socks at the top of a crane, is a reminder of how ownership of every city’s landscape is so often usurped for commercial ends. Urban explorers want to reclaim that view one decaying monument at a time.

27

P U N N Y BUSINESS ROSANNA HILDYARD

Sunday. Day of rest: some joke. Got up late, which put me in a bad mood straight away – I had business to do, and was in no mood for timewasting.

Made it into town, stopping at the Keen Bean for the first coffee of the day.

‘Black coffee,’ I said to the waitress.

‘Americano? Regular, large? Our house blend is the Java but I’d recommend the Columbian! It’s what I have myself.

Sugar? Milk? We’ve got milk! Soy, coconut, almond, hazelnut, rice?’ She paused. ‘Goat?’

‘Nah, just black I reckon.’

I tried to work on some emails for half an hour but she kept telling all the customers about where the coffee came from, so I packed it in. Went to sit in the Burger Off greasy spoon instead: some peace at last.

Wandering down Cowley Road after that, I popped into Cycloanalysts as I needed a new front light. God, I hate those bike nutters.

‘How long will these last?’

‘Well, it depends. What percentage of the time do you cycle in the dark? You may be in need of a sturdier light. How often, on average, do you take your bike off-road?

Are you likely to crash, or even bump your bike? If so…’ Asked me so many questions I left without getting anything.

Passed Just Ink About It after that. I remember when I got my first tattoo there, when I was seventeen—a naked girl who looked a bit like Liz from Atomic Kitten. Was heading towards Locks of Fun to get a haircut, but when I arrived I noticed the bloke inside had a mullet.

28

Decided I’d better play it safe, just got my beard trimmed instead.

Picked up the week’s veg from Melon Cauli greengrocer’s. God, my life is boring. They only had sweet potatoes. I prefer normal potatoes.

Ran into Barry outside the Dew Drop Inn and ended up going for a mid-afternoon pint, followed by a few whiskies. Next thing I knew I was falling out the door again. ‘And don’t come back!’ Bloody unfriendly landlord. Went for a fish supper with Barry at Fryer Tuck’s House of Cod to recover, but felt pretty sick and guilty after that. Barry insisted on staying out for a few more, so we went to one of those trendy new cocktail bars that’s just opened up by the roundabout. ‘Screaming Orgasm,’ said Barry, laughing his head off and elbowing me. I pretended not to notice and ordered an Old Fashioned.

I made it home eventually, still feeling pretty bad. Ended up throwing up all over Maureen’s new Moroccan tapestry rug. Flicked through the Yellow Pages in panic until I found a number which looked helpful.

‘Hi?

This Walter Wall?

Walter Wall Carpets ?’

Annoyingly, they didn’t do specialist cleaning. Took it to Washing Well launderette on a hope and a prayer but of course it wouldn’t fit in any of the machines. Decided I’d just pretend we’d got burgled and took it to Cash 22, the pawnbroker’s. Got forty quid for it but there’ll be hell to pay.

DAY IN THE LIFE OF A NORTHERNER ROSIE

9am — Wake up.

Haven’t b e l l s w o k e m e u p e v e r y h o u r.

COLLIER

slept

cause

the

1 0 a m — O f f t o t h e l i b r a r y. T h e b i g q u e s t i o n i s , w h i c h o n e ? I t ’ s nice that they’ve not all been shut down.

11am — G etting coffee with a friend. They charg ed us £3.50 for a drink and she called this ‘jokes’.

1 2 p m — B a c k a t t h e R a d C a m . S m i l e a t a b o y. H e m o u t h s “ W h o the fuck is she?” to his mate.

1 p m — T h e g i r l s i t t i n g n e x t t o m e i s r e a d i n g a Ta b a r t i c l e c a l l e d ‘ Yo u K n o w Yo u W e n t t o a P r i v a t e S c h o o l W h e n … ’ L e a v e t h e R a d Cam. 1.30pm — Doing some people watching over lunch. I spot: four pairs of chinos, seven girls in Air Maxes and twent y-six tourists. An improvement.

2 pm — Cross the road on Broad Street so I don’t have to talk to Ta r q u i n o r T w a t t e r s o r w h a t e v e r h e ’ s c a l l e d .

3pm — Have decided to star t telling people I’m from Nor th L o n d o n . T h i s r e a l l y d o e s m a k e l i f e a l o t e a s i e r.

5pm — Have been walking up and down Cornmarket Street for a n h o u r n o w. S o m e t h i n g i n t h e a i r m a k e s i t f e e l j u s t l i k e h o m e .

8 p m — W a t c h L o o k N o r t h o n B B C i P l a y e r. W r i t e i n m y d i a r y ever ything that’s happened at home. There’s been a flood and some cuts to the local arts council.

11pm — Gone out. In the smoking area and talking to proper lush lad. It was going great until he asked me what school I went to.

12pm — Ask the girl behind the bar for a treble and she looks at me like I’ve said something in French.

2am — Back home. Drunkenly book a train home for the weekend. I need a break.

29

A M

S B

S L

E E

AND THE B L U R R I N G LINES BETWEEN ARCHITECTURE AND ART GEORGE GRYLLS A S S E M B L E IS NOT AN ART COLLECTIVE IT IS AN ARCHITECTURE COLLECTIVE; ONE WHICH WON THE TURNER PRIZE And no matter how many times various Tate officials can prod the group into describing housing, furniture and urban planning as art, these are disciplines that do not belong in a traditional gallery. It’s easy to see how the art establishment was keen to associate itself with Assemble’s bottom-up ethos. The words ‘collective ownership’ and ‘inclusivity’ appear in almost every interview with the group: a much-needed antidote to the seemingly unshakeable image of advertisement-courting 90s Brit art. Last year, then, the Turner panel bloated the broad definitions of art to include the democratising presence of Assemble.

U n l i k e t h e m e d i a o f o t h e r, m o r e traditional Turner entries—video art, installation work, music (Janice Kerbel was nominated last year for her nine-movement choral piece Doug)—architecture is functional, a quality which can be undermined by the categorisation of something as a r t . Ye t t h e T u r n e r P r i z e c h o s e to recog nise one of Assemble’s most functional pieces.

30

The Granby Four Streets project in Liverpool is Assemble’s response to negligence, dilapidation and decay in the area which was so damaged during the Toxteth riots. Their ingenious case-by-case improvements have fought to retain the character of terraced housing in a suburb that had been repeatedly preyed upon by “cynical top-down” planning.

But as Assemble themselves noted, considering Granby as art could commodify its regeneration. Fran Edgerly, Assemble member, admitted to the Tate: “the nomination in some ways created quite an uncomfortable sense for us… It suddenly created this rarefied approach to coming to Granby and looking at people’s lives, whilst the way they have occupied space and their activities have been so organic.” So Assemble, practical as ever in the face of a problem, responded to potential commodification with literal commodification on their own terms. They used the Turner Prize to launch a craft workshop in the area which would train local people to source, make and sell pieces of homeware. All the profits, be it from a handmade tile for £8 or from a rock mantelpiece for £1,500, flow back into the regeneration of the area.

Five years before Granby, Assemble realised their first project, the Cineroleum, on the site of an old petrol station in London. From the street, the white fabric cover seemed only to promise that building work was beginning on swanky flats for Clerkenwell Road. In fact, the collective had constructed a temporary cinema. Some of Assemble’s projects are somewhat tongue-in-cheek; pragmatic, but reasonably classifiable as ‘artistic’. They could also have been nominated for the Brutalist Playground, pastel foam mockups of concrete masterpieces, or even Folly for a Flyover, a performance space playfully wedged both between and under the roar of the A12. The former recalls Carsten Höller’s work with slide installations and the latter Rachel Whiteread’s Turner Prizewinning House—the concrete inside-out of a Victorian two-up two-down. But what Whiteread sculpted was anti-space out of space, whereas Assemble achieved a functional opposite. For Granby, however, the arguments cannot be made. It is resolutely urban planning done extremely well, and this is what the Turner panel adjuged, of all their projects, as art.

The Turner’s decision suggests an art establishment in crisis, an acknowledgement that a number of questions need to be asked and that Assemble might point to an answer.

The first question concerns the gallery space and its potential redundancy.

The contemporary art gallery is already under strain from the fantastic reaches of conceptualism. More often than not new galleries resemble big warehouses sufficiently enormous to accommodate leviathan visions. Think of the Palais de Tokyo in Paris or the Turbine Hall at the Tate. But even such spaces cannot exhibit a whole neighbourhood, a community spirit, an urban fabric.

There is an irony therefore that the first architects acknowledged as ar tists could not be exhibited. The fetishisers of form like Gehry, Libeskind and Nouvel, are all architects who cour t exhibitionism. They keenly take on commissions to design galleries sculptural in form, advancing the idea that the building is an ar twork as much as its contents. But when Granby becomes ‘ar t’ the exhibition space becomes pretty much negated.

There is nothing to immediately see and therefore the nominal function of Gehry’s ‘ar tistic’ buildings is suddenly redundant. A collective that cares little for labels has produced ‘ar t,’ and in so doing they have undermined the claims of architects who do value that beatified tag.

So how do we fix the gallery space to exhibit the unexhibitable Assemble?

Influenced by the curatorial ideas of Brazillian architect Lina Bo Bardi, Assemble propose public collaboration: if you cannot exhibit community spirit in the gallery then make the gallery part of the community spirit.

A commission to design an art gallery at Goldsmith’s promises to be a ‘public resource’ whose design encourages communication between the a r t i s t a n d t h e s p e c t a t o r, t h e architect and the people.

This is indicative of Assemble’s second challenge to the art world: integrating the public. The general archiphobe would argue that Assemble are unique in their profession for involving their clients in their projects.

But their uniqueness in fact derives from a lack of boundary between architect and client. Even the group’s offices are incorporated into an adjacent public space.

And at Granby Assemble and the residents wrested control of the neighbourhood from the inefficiency of local housing authorities and job centres. Top-down management was replaced by bottom-up collaboration and together, architect and client took what William Morris would have termed a “genuine interest in all the details of daily life.” Certainly there has never been a Turner Prize winner before who has proudly identified themselves as a plumber.

The public clamour for Assemble to win the Turner prize is attributable to them being the only nominees who manifestly cared about the consumers of their work. They were broadening the scope of their ar t not through facile coloured dots or by exuding superiority through weighty themes obscurely addressed, but by engaging their public in intelligent dialogue. Many commentators have been quick to compare this social interaction with Morris’s Ar ts and Crafts movement. The ideal of a universal better quality of life and a democratisation of ar t is shared by both groups. As Anthony EngiMeacock put it: “There is a strong idea in our society that creativity is for the gifted few and everyone else inevitably has to just live with and in the culture that the gifted few make.

We don’t believe that, and our being here is a hopeful sign that there is a wider shift.” Assemble work amongst and with the people, not above them.

The nomination of Assemble for the Turner Prize was a brave decision; the awarding was even braver. It made unambiguous the recognition that some awkward questions need to be asked about the future of ar t.

But Assemble is not an ar t collective.

They are architects. Perhaps they have just the practical skills needed to solve the very problems they pose.

31

R

Y

T A H R I R S Q U A R E JOSHUA

AS

USUAL.

The tanks are gone, as are the protestors’ tents. The traffic, the noise, the pollution has returned.

Where armed police cars once stood, a single, unarmed police officer attempts to direct the t r a f f i c , a n d Ta h r i r S q u a r e r e t u r n s t o its old life after four years of unrest.

W h e n I h a d f i r s t v i s i t e d Ta h i r j u s t two months before, an atmosphere of uneasiness still permeated the vast square, the armed police were on edge, fearful; even the metro s t a t i o n u n d e r Ta h r i r w a s c l o s e d .

In the heady days of January 2011, the world celebrated as Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt for twenty years, resigned.

Here was an example of a Middle Eastern country embracing liberal democracy; a modern revolution motivated by and organised through social media.

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In Egypt, the question of how one should live after the revolution is a daily concern.

BUSINESS

HILLIS

Five years from the Arab Spring, the world has moved on. Some hold up the human rights abuses of the new regime as proof of a failed revolution, and others are just happy there is some resemblance of stability—anything is better than Syria, after all. In Eg ypt, the question of how one should live after the revolution is a daily concern.

H o w d o y o u r e s p o n d t o a p o l i c e o ff i c e r d i r e c t i n g t r a ff i c w h e n , i n t h e n o t t o o distant past, you or someone you know yelled in protest and screamed at s o m e o n e i n u n i f o r m ? P e o p l e I k n e w, w h o h a d g o n e t o Ta h r i r i n 2 0 1 1 a n d 2 0 1 3 and had even thrown rocks at police, now have to negotiate a much changed relationship with figures representing the government.

E g y p t ’s political discourse has been dramatically altered.

It is unsurprising, given the role of social media in the revolution, that Facebook has continued to play a prominent role in this discourse. Where Facebook had once been a tool to organise protests and voice complaints, it is now extensively used by the government.

People are called to consider what they can do to improve and change Eg ypt, to take pride i n t h e i r c o u n t r y. F a c e b o o k may have been once the medium to voice those individual grievances which, a s t h e y g r e w, f u e l l e d t h e f i r e and drew so many onto the s t r e e t s . To d a y t h e i n d i v i d u a l sharing of nationalistic government posts fuels the shame that one does not care about the dignity of Egypt.

Very public events such as the opening of a new Suez Canal link and the announcement of a new, clean, traffic free capital cit y costing £30 million being built have helped to stir up this pride and nationalism. In the place of the tents left over from the protests in Tahrir, there now stands a huge white flag pole flying the Eg yptian flag. Around its base are flowers and nondescript hieroglyphics and Arabic letters are etched on the white base itself. The revolution has been sanitised. In place of its radical elements, there stands a narrative of ‘Eg ypt the Future’ in which stabilit y has been recovered by the army and President Sisi. Eg ypt will now move into the future as the leader of the Middle East, open to foreig n investment, a force against terrorism.

All opposition to the dig nit y of the state must be removed and all must ask what they can do to benefit their country. Business as usual.

It is easy to see why this narrative is attractive in the post 2011 world, appealing to a hinterland when Eg ypt led the Middle East as the mother of the Arab World. The collective sharing of patriotic posts understandably gives the feeling of securit y after such turmoil where no one is quite sure of the future. But still the uneasiness lingers; bombs continue to kill in Cairo, the insurrection in Sinai carries on.

It is this uneasiness which we can see in the government’s use of Facebook, repeatedly calling for individuals to identify themselves with the state and asking what they can do for Eg ypt. They are being forced to accept a revolution in the Eg yptian body politic. For over sixt y years, a patriarchal system of government soug ht to exclude individuals from politics and the workings of the government.

Political exclusion in the form of the military’s Eg yptian flag.

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However, the events of 2011 have unleashed the possibility of a different state, whether shaped by the Muslim Brotherhood or liberal ideals. Social media was the medium through which the excluded could claim involvement in politics.

Social media has been transformed from a revolutionar y to a state bui lding m e d i u m Under this new language of politics, visions for a different form of government compete with the old.

In calling for individuals to ask what they can do for their country the government are attempting to channel the hope fuelled by this new possibility for their own preservation. It would seem one of the great ironies of the revolution is that social media has been transformed from a revolutionary to a state building medium. But the unpredictable nature of social media also shows the instability of the ‘Egypt the Future’ narrative, asser ting an old vision in a new world of possibilities.

The traditional power of the army cannot dampen the wild fire nature of social media; their posts and narrative compete in an ever increasing field.

Of course when one considers the power of the army, the idea that different visions of government could bring down the regime is laughable.

Through the use of compulsory military

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service, the army controls the state’s bureaucracy and is the main economic power within Egypt. But ironically it is precisely this power which most threatens the current regime. If the attractiveness of their narrative is based on security, then the ongoing, unwinnable insurgency in Sinai threatens their message. As the terrorist organisations develop more sophisticated means to evade the authorities, the unrest edges closer to Cairo—with bombings becoming more regular. The targeted killing of the attorney general five minutes away from my flat last June gives testament to such advancing abilities. If the military state fails to provide basic security, it is questionable how long Cairenes will keep sharing the government’s posts, except maybe in irony. Social media could easily again take on the role it had in 2011 in challenging the toleration of another repressive regime.

The promises of a bright future with a new shining capital city and investment may end up looking hollow if electricity begins to fail again in Cairo and ‘Egypt the Future’ turns sour. The very rhetoric which has won suppor t for the government could prove to be its undoing. Social media may yet become a revolutionary medium again. Back in Tahrir the speed with which the metro station was shut after the mere rumour of trouble reveals the instability still present; a regime twitchy, trying to secure its power in an uncer tain world.

Business may be back to usual but it may not be for much longer.

In April this year I went to stay with JeanPaul Mulot and his family on the Île de Ré, a French island off the coast of La Rochelle, famous for its oysters and sweeping light.

I was there for a tutoring job, but I took the opportunity over the course of ten days to quiz Jean-Paul on his ten years at the Le Figaro, including his time as managing editor and his thoughts on the state of journalism today. Our conversation ranged from the refugee crisis to the growing threat of Google’s media monopoly.

O V E R A WEEK W I T H J E A N P A U L M U L O T E X - E D I T O R O F L E F I G A R O JACOB

LEE

One of my first questions was what he saw as the future of war journalism. He told me that today the need for journalists on the front line has hugely diminished, partly because there is often no longer a ‘front line’, but also because the effects of war are more efficiently documented in places like Greece and Italy than they are running from bombsite to bombsite in Syria.

We began to talk about the ethics of hospitality and asylum in light of the refugee crisis, and whether it was right for Angela Merkel to open up Germany’s borders only to close them several months later. “The idea

that you should adopt an immigration policy that favours the educated over those that are not is potentially devastating for a country like Syria.

I personally strongly object to the middle class immigration we are seeing right now, and the idea that we should welcome them because they are doctors or teachers or lawyers, only because if they settle in the UK, France or Germany there is a very serious risk you will never be able to rebuild those countries once the war is over. If they don’t come back there will be nobody left who can rebuild the structure of society.”

I wasn’t sure whether this was a good enough reason to turn people away at the border. “We are not talking about the people who can’t afford to pay to get to Europe and are stuck and dying on the edge of a warzone. We are talking about the people who can. That’s why I think there is a problem: you are stripping a country. It’s non-egalitarian: they get to Greece and there is this impression that they are very poor but it is just not true. The very poor are stuck and cannot do anything.

So if hospitality is just for people who are able to get to the border something has definitely gone wrong. It has become a form of classism.”

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IF GOOGLE S T O P S T O M O R R O W , V I R T U A L L Y EVERYTHING S T O P S

Jean-Paul played a very impor tant role in Le Figaro’s history in that he was responsible for creating and launching the online version of the paper. On the Sunday there was wind and rain so we stayed inside. I took the oppor tunity to talk to him about how he thinks the internet has changed journalism.

“Re-publication has become a real problem. World news is now republished 20,000 times in two hours across the planet and no one has the time to check that the newspaper who has published it has verified their facts or not. Figures that look very professional are often misleading or wrong. It’s possible to push massive content at breakneck speed and timing really is an issue for verification.”

“It’s great that you can now have almost instantaneous knowledge of what is going on at the other side of the world.

The flip side is that in the past with Le Figaro or the Guardian you knew exactly what their sources were but now it’s impossible to have that sor t of assurance.”

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I raised the concern that this plurality of information could be seen as a potential threat to a newspaper’s traditional role of keeping corporations and governments in check. “What I find most troubling is Google.

Everyone is making deals with Google because they have so much money. It’s disturbing that it is investing so much in the media: if you look at the details closely Google has formed partnerships with virtually every newspaper on the planet. It’s not a huge amount of money that they are giving to them each time but it is a couple of million, which is a very important lifeline for those papers, but at the same time it means they are not going to report on the tax dodging that is going on at Google.

“If Google stops tomorrow virtually everything stops. But that is what is so worrying about it. As opposed to sites like eBay, Google is pouring money into almost everything, which makes its involvement in the information industry even more unsettling. Personally I don’t think that Google should be allowed to invest in the media. They should pay their taxes and then if governments want to create foundations for media Google should really have no intervention in it.

“I found the BSkyB deal in 2011 really interesting because people were so afraid of Murdoch yet they think they have nothing to worry about with Google. I remember 8 years ago we met with Google and you could tell they were already incredibly cautious. They are the only company that I have ever interacted with that sent three lawyers to an initial meeting, and that was 8 years ago. Google is more powerful than most states yet we don’t think twice about it. People see Murdoch as a threat but if you compare Murdoch and Google there is really no comparison.”

As someone who has an interest in journalism, I’m worried about the declining commerciality of its trade. I asked Jean-Paul about the ways in which papers and magazines might adapt to survive.

“The way people are paid will have to change.

There should be a correlation between page hits and revenue for a journalist, much like with the revenue sales of literature. It would be a good idea to create a media package like with what you have with Sky TV. The problem is that newspapers are not very good at talking to each other so implementing something like that would be difficult.

“Twenty-five years ago if you wanted to have the news you had to buy a paper. Now you have access to so much for free and so to convince a reader to spend a bit of money is difficult: they have to be very dedicated. A lot of people see it as entertainment, which is something that the Daily Mail has really capitalised on.”

In our final converstation Jean-Paul began to speak more generally about his time at Le Figaro.

“I like things that are controversial but that is not really the culture of Le Figaro, which is a very traditional right-wing paper. I did fight the left a lot.

I’m very anti-communist. But after ten years I was ready to go. At the time the Vatican were implying that all gay priests were paedophiles and this was something I strongly objected against. So I wrote a column arguing that the Bible makes no reference to the sexuality of priests and it is not something that should come into religion. Le Figaro is a very religious paper so I knew there would be trouble.

But I think that’s why I did it.”

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ALL YOU CREATIVE TYPES—THE MEDIA HOUSES, NOVELISTS, FILMMAKERS AND DIRECTORS ALIKE— IF YOU WERE TO CAPTURE INDIA, WHAT WOULD YOU SHOW?

A BEGINNER'S GUIDE: HOW TO DEPICT INDIA ABHISVARA SINHA

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CONFUSED? DON’T WORRY, HERE’S A HANDY GUIDE THAT’S SURE TO WIN YOU THAT BOOKER, PULITZER OR ACADEMY AWARD YOU’RE AFTER.

Firstly, always depict India as two exotic, enthralling extremes.

Either like Jodhpur, a pastoral paradise with Indian women draped in gossamer veils, or Mumbai, an overpopulated city in which slums, rape, prostitution, drugs, gangs, and—not to forget— stark poverty dominate.

There are approximately 1,200 kilometres between Jodhpur and Mumbai, but don’t get bogged down in those nuances: your viewers definitely won’t.

On the other hand, when it comes to the people, remind your audience that India is absolutely about the numbers. Don’t hold back on emphasising the varied personalities swimming in the Indian populace. Such characters may include, but are not limited to: beggars, money-hungry politicians, feudal employers, loving NGO workers, rape victims, sadhus, sacred cows, money-launderers, callcentre workers, rapists and servants.

Never theless, upon careful analysis of the works of pioneers in your field—from The White Tiger to Slumdog Millionaire —you will realise that your success actually depends on the por trayal of cer tain essential characters of the Real Indian narrative. Once identified, replicate them.

The Aspirational Youth, for example, is indispensable to this narrative, because the old in India are too decrepit to have an inspirational growth story. There can’t be a happygo-lucky young character working a regular nine-to-five job—those people simply don’t exist in LEDCs like India. Instead, the ambitious protagonist must leave their obscure village with no sewage system to search for the riches of urban India.

There, they must be affronted with the filth, corruption and congestion that all Indian cities happily provide.

They must also submit dutifully to their money-obsessed family back home because when you have at least six children, as all Indians do, the inherent desperation of your situation obviously leaves no room for emotional, familial attachment.

Only use a female character if she has been raped, abused, or oppressed by the patriarchy.

Otherwise her story can’t depict the struggles of Real Indian Women. As for the Real Indian Man, he must be the custodian of family values, macho and stoic to the core, and faintly misogynistic at hear t. He is the sun around which every woman’s story must revolve.

Equally integral is The Beggar. The Beggar may feature as a man, woman or child because the grappling hands of pover ty clasp at everyone in India.

Ensure that The Beggar is positioned beside a filthy traffic light, knocking on the windows of the elitist Indians in their BMW cars, too rich to share even crumbs with the poor. Disregard the explanation that dishing out cash to the homeless at times perpetuates the pover ty cycle—the image of upper class apathetic Indians is what you’re trying to sell. Ensure that the only lonely heretic in the sea of hear tless Indians is The Loving NGO Worker. Preferably, cast them as white. Not because he or she is overridden with a guilt for what their colonial forefathers wrought upon the country—but because they care.

When describing religious diversity in India, depict all Indians as Hindus—after all, the name ‘Hindustan’ practically has the word Hindu in it. Include at least one image of either: an orange draped sadhu in a contortionist yoga pose on the banks of the Ganges; Indians lighting candles and eating sweets to celebrate Diwali; Hindus devoutly praying to their one thousand and one gods.

Ignore the fact India is home to the second largest Muslim population on the planet as well as large communities of Christians, Sikhs, Parsis, Jains, Buddhists and Jews. Censor descriptions of equally popular celebrations of Ramadan and Christmas. If you happen to feature a Muslim fellow, make sure that he is angry, disaffected and bitter—a byproduct of being a minority in a Hindu majority country.

IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT YOU INFUSE YOUR WORK WITH SUBLIMINAL IMPERIALISTIC MESSAGES Illustrate a civilized Indian as one who uses knives and forks in place of the Indian tradition of eating with their hands. While attractively exotic, this is clearly archaic.

However, don’t bother reminding your viewers that when Westerners use cutlery, much like their ancestors, this tradition isn’t inherent to ‘civilized culture’ but handed down by legacies of cultural hegemony. And while you’re at it, remember to depict your Progressive Indian as one that listens to western music, watches Hollywood movies and reads English newspapers. Your viewers aren’t interested in modern Indians who perform traditional Indian dance and music—that’s not the Real India, remember?

Paint the Indian democracy as an unruly bureaucracy. Relegate statistics that claim India is the world’s largest functioning democracy with voter turnouts at a staggering 66%—your readers don’t really care for the numbers, they want real life stories. So let corruption consume your depiction of the Real Indian democracy and ignore reports of Indians fighting in recent years to reshape the political system. Ensure that your audience understands that this venality surges into every crevice of Indian life, from the bribe paid to a fat police officer to the money-siphoning politicians who run the nation. Remember, corruption is just as important to Indian identity as holy cows.

After lovingly slandering the nation through every word, paragraph, sound bite, pixel, frame and hyphen in your piece, bask in the beauty of the country’s imperfections. Always conclude by inviting your viewers into this inescapable mess you have just described, because after all, you are enamoured with India.

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C U R T A I N P O E M D Is this the shape of longing? These grapes f r e s c o e s t h a t c h a n g e a s t h e wo r l d d r i e s fa c i n g d r e w yo u c l o s e r to t h e n a t u r e

O

M

I

N

I

C

r e f l e c t i n g t h e v a l l e y s o f yo u r e ye s ; p a l e ove r t h e m . W h e n t h e fa c e yo u we r e o f p a i n t , a s i r o c c o b l e w a n d t h e wo r l d

turned flat. Or flat on its head, as birds

c a m e c r a s h i n g b a c k i n to t h e s k y. I

r e m e m b e r yo u ’ d s a i d t h a t p a i n t i n g w a s

l i ke a m e m o r y o f i t s o w n c o n s t r u c t i o n ,

a n d w a n d e r e d b a c k i n to yo u r d a yd r e a m ,

calling it a ‘poem-painting’, because

yo u ’ d b e e n r e a d i n g A s h b e r y a t t h e t i m e

a n d we ’ d h a d o l i ve s fo r l u n c h . T h o u g h

t h e e l d e r s d i d n’ t u n d e r s t a n d yo u m u c h ,

c l a i m i n g t h e o n to l o g i c a l f u n c t i o n o f a r t

w a s to g o r g e a v a l l e y f r o m yo u r s i g h t

a n d l e t i t r e s t , I s a i d yo u we r e s i n c e r e .

T h o u g h I kn e w yo u ’ d l o s t yo u r m a r b l e ’s

to u c h , a s t h e s u n l i g h t w a n e d t o ve l ve t r e d

and the wings of the dream came apar t

fo r g o o d . A n d t h o u g h I t r i e d to r e -

e n te r t h e s u r fa c e , yo u ’ d l i n e d yo u r m o u t h

42

w i t h fo r t u n e s , r a m p a r t s o u t o f w a x .

ALPHA STATE C E N T R A L H

A

N

D

A s p i r a t i o n fa d e s , a n d fo g s d ow n t h e w i n d s h i e l d , i n to a q u a n t i t y o f j a m a n d f l o w. A b o u t t h e t i m e w h e n

t h e t h e a t r e o p e n s fo r

t h e s u n to s e t b a c k i n to t h e c a p i t a l , yo u ’ v e t h i n n e d my blood-count, or sent me veering through a series of controlled shocks

and depar tures; the rare bit image melting t h e p l a te i n to p i xe l s . N e w s s h o c k s d o w n to s c a l e t h e l i n e ; t h e e n z y m e s i g n a l b r e a ks . A n d t h e p h r a s e o r d e r i s p l a c e d

j u s t e n o u g h to r e o r d e r

yo u r r e f l e c t i o n aw a y a n d u n d e r t h e d o o r. Yo u s l i d e a b o u t o n t h e p ave m e n t ’s c o m m e r c i a l g l o s s a s yo u m u s t w h e n t h e d u c k r a b b i t

g n aw s i t s d o u b l e

to t h e b o n e

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TEN DAYS IN TEHRAN TA R A

RO S H AN

O n e n i g ht i n Te h ra n last spring hundreds of hands gripped ladders and brushes and toiled to transform the city with glue and paper before morning.

Overnight, more than 1,500 advertising billboards were covered by both Iranian and foreign works of art, and when the city awoke, its people drove about their business through a literal m e t r o p o l i t a n g a l l e r y.

The government initiative, named ‘A G a l l e r y A s B i g A s A Tow n’ , l a ste d fo r ten days, and the loss of advertising revenue as well as the installation itself incurred great cost to the city council.

The intention was to improve footfall in Te h ra n’s m u s e u m s and galleries, as part of an attempt to revitalise Iran’s ar t i n d u s t r y.

My aunt, a resident of Te h ra n , to l d m e that the absence of adverts bombarding her senses left in its place a sensation of relief. She drove past works by Van Gogh, M u n c h a n d H o c k n e y, as well as Iranian artworks both from the Islamic and preIslamic period. The event feels symbolic of Iran’s recent steps towards taking its place as a member of the international c o m m u n i t y, a w a y

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from cultural isolation justified by religion. In January o f t h i s y e a r, t h e s o called ‘nuclear deal’ between Iran and the US was finally arrived at, and after a decade, US trade sanctions that have cost the country more than $160 billion (£102 billion) in oil revenue were lifted. The prospect of technological advancement across Iran afforded by economic growth is exciting.

This, alongside Rouhani’svictory as a moderate candidate, stirred hope for positive change in Iran. Those ten days in May seemed to signify a shift away from the refusal to acknowledge the value of anything We ste r n . To express hope for a country that still operates under the government of a Supreme Leader may seem difficult; like most Iranians, I have learned to fear it, because hope for a better future is what produced the Islamic Republic.

Nearly forty years e a r l i e r, a n o t h e r ten-day artistic venture served not just as a marker of change, but as a catalyst. Unlike the installation in Te h r a n l a s t y e a r, t h i s festival of creativity was not sanctioned by the authorities.

I n O c t o b e r 1 9 7 7, w i t h the nation on the cusp of revolution, Iran’smost prominent artists and intellectuals staged what is known as Dah S h a b - e S h e h r , o r ‘ Te n Nights of Poetry’, i n Te h ra n’s G o e t h e Institute. Many of

the readings were of works that had been censored, and as the words the Shah had tried to silence rang out for ten nights, his power slipped from his fingers. In 1979 the last Persian king left Iran. But the tide of hope that rose with revolution was soon poisoned, leaving an acrid taste in the mouths of those who had worked to achieve it, one that still l i n g e r s t o d a y. B e f o r e the freethinkers who had fought to over throw the Shah’s despotism had a chance to breathe in t h e i r v i c t o r y, t h e y found themselves under the thumb of a new dictatorship: the Islamic Republic.

The Pahlavi dynasty’s bans on public hijab a n d p r a y e r, b o r n from the conviction that if Iran was to become modern, it must assimilate itself uncritically to the West in all things, were replaced soon after the revolution by the Islamic Republic’s enforced modest dress code.

The government censors dissenting voices from all Iranian-based media sources, and imprisons its critics, just as the Shah did.

This has produced a counterculture founded on resentment towards the government’s ham-fisted rejection of all things Western.

For many in Iran, the West has become synonymous with m o d e r n i t y. T h e impulse towards progress is bound to the impulse to leave Iran, or for Iran to cease being Iranian.

Iranians have been yanked from one extreme to another o v e r t h e l a s t c e n t u r y, and the quality of much of mainstream Iranian art has been crushed and whitewashed as a result.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the music videos that play on Iranian TV screens through the illegal satellite dishes most Iranian families use to access entertainment.

These videos are largely created by ex-patriots, and they epitomise a culture that distances itself from tradition and faith, gazing instead at the West with awe.

Ebrahim Golestan, a prominent literary figure and innovative f i l m m a k e r, s e e s t h e fragmented, fractured face of Iran’s culture as having “fallen into a state of decadence” after failing to adapt to the onslaught of m o d e r n i t y. G o l e s t a n laments that Iranians are suspended in a state of detachment from both our own culture and that of the West. The popular music scene is characterised by its derivative nature, inconsequential s u b j e c t m a t t e r, b l u e eyed video girls and shiny cars. Of course, there are many talented Iranians making music that attempts to navigate the Iranian identity in a t h o u g h t f u l w a y, l i ke Kiosk and Hichkas.

But you’ll never see these artists’ more engaging work on typical music channels; in the interest of political n e u t r a l i t y, t h e y tend towards music distinguished by its materialism and cultural 45 disassociation.

Iran’s oppressive

Iran’s oppressive government has forcibly produced a diaspora filled with a sense of betrayal, and resentment towards the homeland. The post-revolutionary regime throws out the baby with the bathwater when it equates the evils of Western imperialism with modernity and personal freedom.

In turn, this has spawned a tendency in Iranians to deify the West, and reject our cultural heritage.

This inclination is bolstered by the racism faced by people of colour in the West.

My life has been shaped by these cultural tensions.

Learning about Iran’s history has deepened my understanding of my identity, and clarified my most frustrating experiences. History culminates in everyday moments: sipping homebrewed alcohol in a vacated apartment at a child’s thirteenth birthday party in Iran last summer.

The thrill of sneaking around reminded me of my teenage years.

My grandfather sat downstairs with his sisters, who wore headscarves because they were in the company of strange men. Looking back from the pages of a photo album were themselves, bare legged and long haired; women younger by nearly half a

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century. Meanwhile, the tragedy of Iran’s situation is expressed by this man who has mastered neither English nor Persian, who scrambles for words each time he speaks.

This tension forms the center of Abbas Milani’s book, Lost Wisdom: Rethinking Modernity in Iran.

An AmericanIranian academic, he attempts to excavate from Iran’s literary tradition a model of modernity that is distinctly Iranian. He begins in the seventh century, when the Persian empire faced an Arab invasion. The Islamification that followed irrevocably diverted the path of Iran’s history, a cultural ‘elasticity’ that allowed Iran to maintain a resilient sense of independent identity that survived the transformation.

He argues that the path that leads out of stagnation for Iran is to be found by digging inwards.

Milani’s forwardlooking thesis offers a means of progress that does not entail leaving Iranian history behind. He argues that in order for Iran to move forward, Iranians must work to avoid both self-hatred and

insulating narcissism.

Rouhani’s democratic efforts will unleash billions of dollars into Iran’s economy, and with it the possibility of a thriving tourism industry, technological advancement, and infrastructural developments.

These are causes for optimism, and perhaps signify Iran beginning to uncover its eyes as an international presence. Channels available through satellite, like BBC Persian and AlJazeera, offer content to Iranians unfettered by Iran’s self-aggrandising agenda. Art and culture shows like Tamasha connect an Iranian audience to artists all over the world, both Iranian and otherwise.

Nevertheless, the journalists who are publicly affiliated with these channels are often unable to return to Iran.

Countless Iranian artists are unable to practise their craft without fear in their home country, and those who choose to stay do so at the cost of liberty. The paintings printed on billboards in late 2015 were curated by the government’s

conservative religious vision, and we cannot forget the paintings my aunt hadn’t got to gaze at through her car windows, hidden from sight for depiction of nudity or some other sin.

Paintings by famous artists, acquired by the pre-revolution Pahlavi dynasty, now gather dust in Iranian vaults.

Iranians everywhere must resolve to blow the dust off the country’s longneglected cultural archives, with an open mind garnered through learning.

Only through knowledge of both east and west will Iranians move beyond the backand-forth oscillation between idealisation and demonisation of western modernity.

A generation of forward-thinking Iranians could radically alter the face of Iranian politics—but only if aided by a diaspora intent on informing themselves and the world of the complexities of Iranian history and identity.

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Though ar t and football are not usually the perfect match in the average suppor ter or ar t collector’s mind, they’ve always been for Jernigan. His studio has always been filled with little drawings and sketches of Zidanes, Maradonas and Cantonas scoring, handballing or fighting. In 2014, he began to wonder what it would be like to see those figurines play the great games of his past. To try it out, he decided to create a stop-motion animation of a multi-jointed Zinedine Zidane figurine walking to the penalty spot and placing the ball on the spot.

Not having the right software, the attempt was painstakingly drawn out.

“It was horrible stuff,” he tells me.

“When I got home and popped the memory card in, I found a creature of my nightmares: a huddled, jerkily stumbling, baldheaded, shadowed figurine stumbling into the frame.”

O F

F O

EMANUELE

F O

T BIASIOL

IT’S THE EIGHTY-SEVENTH MINUTE and Newcastle United are down 3-4 in front of their own fans. A defensive clearance puts Coloccini out of reach, a n d s p i n s t h e b a l l u p i n t h e a i r. I t f a l l s o u t s i d e t h e b o x t o t h e u n l i ke l y C h e i c k Tiotè, “who beans it low and cur ves i t i n t o t h e b o t t o m c o r n e r, ” a l m o s t making St. James’ Park collapse under t h e w e i g h t o f t h e s u p p o r t e r s ’ r o a r.

On the other side of the ocean, Case Jernigan, art bachelor and aspiring creative, leaps off the barstool and spills his drink on the f l o o r o f a N e w Yo r k p u b . H i s f a v o r i t e goals are exactly Tiotè’skind: ones that are scored with the player’s weak foot, or ‘off-foot’.

48

Although frustrated by the minute details that make a stop-motion animator’s life so complicated, he persevered, locking himself in his studio for long, uninterrupted hours.

Sustaining himself with good music and coffee, he planned and drew his animations while trying to push himself “into a zonal headspace where natural mark making and learned skills flow together with personal history.” The process of actually creating the moving image required even more attention. “While the paper works demand a keen sense of scale to produce a meaningful composition, for animation patience is the key, especially if I’m actively moving paper pieces around, shoot after reshoot.”

A lifelong football fan, I ran into Jernigan’s art when my team, the Old Lady Juventus, started their PR collaboration with Off-Foot, giving Jernigan the opportunity to recreate the ‘goal of the month’ as voted by the fans. His work struck me in the way that it crystalizes the sportive moment into something timeless, thanks to the vintage feel he often gives to his work.

It also tends to bring, by not including detailed reproductions of sponsors, stadiums and crowds, the action into a form of institutional and commercial ‘isolation’—unusual in an age where the hyper-commodification of sports and sportsmen is rife. And this isolation, as well as Jernigan’s attention to detail in reproducing anatomic features and the movement of athletes, encourages an appreciation of the footballing skill being animated as a standalone act.

Just like in football, his reference point for his artistic inspiration was provided by the old greats. He studied “the shape and color of Piero della Francesca, the mark making of Philip Guston, the static beauty of classic hellenistic and Egyptian works,” while also referring to the visual delicacies of Kubrick when putting together his animated narratives. As he dug deeper into the field of animation, he began to perfect not only his technique but his materials: he started adopting “silkypapers from Japan and South Korea, rough hewn pieces from Butan and India and textural sheets from Italy.”

Despite this dedication, his passion for football couldn’t be satiated by just putting ink to paper: he would occasionally emerge from the lofted studio space he arranged in his home to play pickup soccer on some Brooklyn pitches.

That’s where he was reunited with his highschool friend and Manchester United fan Anderson Fariss, with whom he began the project Off-Foot. Jernigan produces all the football-based artwork while Fariss deals with the commercial side.

The club went on to share the piece on their own Instagram, giving credit to Jernigan, whose profile instantly gained 15,000 followers.

That propelled him to the sphere of social media, and since then his job enquiries and opportunities have come flooding in through Instag ram and Twitter. He was approached by L A G alax y, w ho wanted him to commission a short animation for Steven Gerrard’s arrival to the club.

He’s also been working on longer animations: after single-handedly producing the shor t film “A Brief History of Soccer”, for the last few months he has been working on a project called “Soccer in Sun and Shadow” with his friend John Giunta, who is designing the sound for the work. The piece will feature Garrincha, George Best and Maradona and will be read y for the summer.

Sin ce th e esta bli shment o f thei r collab oration, Jerni ga n has been workin g day and ni g ht to tra nsfo rm th e footb alli ng pi eces of hi s ch ildh ood i nto ani mati o ns that convey th e emo ti o na l wei g ht they ha d for h im. T h e ’90s feature heav i l y— from th e violence o f Ca nto na to the free kicks o f Beckha m, fro m A lexi Lalas to Um bro spo r tswea r. But th ou g h h e ce lebrates the hero es o f th e p reinternet era, i t’s the wo rld o f social media that ha s cha ng ed the fu tu re of h is pro j ect. W hi le pro duci ng ar tworks , Jerni ga n wo uld co nstantl y p os t th em on hi s I nsta g ram pro fi le.

On e of h is ink drawi ng ani mati o ns, featu ring Ma ra do na and Messi, went viral and landed o n the desk of one of the co mmuni cati o ns as s is tant at Ba rcelo na FC.

To s a y t h e l e a s t , J e r n i g a n i s “ p r e tt y excited”. He had not expected that something he was doing for his own enjoyment would become such a well-received ar t form. Though he is not only producing commissioned pieces, these make up for the large part of his produce, and mean he can stay in the studio while getting paid—not something that often h a p p e n s i n N e w Yo r k . A f t e r t e a c h i n g , w o r k i n g a s a s c h o o l a d m i n i s t r a t o r, a c o m m i s s i o n e d p o r t r a i t p a i n t e r, w r i t e r, tennis and football coach, it’s the first time a job has allowed him the time and space to flesh out creative ideas. “I get to think about soccer and g et paid at the same time. What’s not to like? Plus, it’s a lot better than selling peanuts at a baseball stadium. Oh yeah, I did that too.”

49

JAYME _ KUSYK

5

_:P _XD!!!!!!!!!

so O nce ther were sisters, they all livd togehter in i think vermt but maybe Detroit..it was like in Old times so thy wer knitting. Meg knittd 800 scarvs, Jo Knitted 800 blankets, Beth knitted 700 socks, Amy kitted 600scarves to because i dont know anything else ucan kit. Actually Jo wasnt kitting so lying on teh rug, s he s a i d t h e r e w e r n t C h r i s t m a s p r e s e n t s . “ I HATE BEING POOR!!!!!!!!1111!1!1!!!! sed Meg but she had an old dress. Amy got hurt with a kitting needle and injured so sniffedly, and Beth was stil content. they were sad then happy o i mean happy and sad bcaus they remembered Father who was in the army. Even though he was calm and peasful, he kcicked as, right now he killedsstuff a lot. Then nobody;y said n e thing then Meg s=id “we should not spend $$ becuz the army needs $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ ” b u t s e c r e tly she wanted pretty things becas

Meg was vain. “i want 2 buy an Old times book i forgetsth e name of” said Jo becas Jo was aboookworm. “i want nuu mmusic sed Beth, quietly becas beth was quiet and musical. “I want pencils” was all Amy said which was poignant. so Then Jo decided that every1 should buuy what they want and lookd at her shoes b/c thas manly to do.

“Complaiin complain compa;slin” said meg babout her job what was governessing.

So then Jo had 2 complain to about watching aunt March. And Beth about her chores,that, were nothing but she was so fral that every1 pretended to feel bad becas she might die at n e moment and then they would all go to Hell. “i hate school” saids Amy and JO laughed becaz serirusly Amy was healthy and wouldnt die n e time soon. “ I HATE BEING POOR!!!!!!1111!!!! ” Meg but no one noticed except Beth because beth was nice..she reminded Meg they wer all really happy mostly becauseo f God but also bexause they were jolly as Jo said “jolly” i guess is a slang word in Old times. Ya and Amy hates slang so they argue for a While, then Meg said stop.

1

“ ur too manly Jo Meg said, then Jo saa=ed she waas manly. and Even Beth said Jo was manly. Jo wantws to go 2 war andkcicked as with Father. & Meg alsosaid thet Amy should tryed to be humble. Beth asked what was her problem and they all agreed thet Beth had no problem bexuse beth=frail+nice.

Right now it was snowing btw. the living room was comfortal but theywer poor and still jolly(ops i use slang!!!!1111!!!!!11)b/c it was peasflu. Meg 16was pretty and vain. Jo was 15, tall, tan, gray, brown to. Beth was .peasful, nice, happy and quiet. Amy was yellow, pale, blue &pale. Meanwhile it was 6oclcok and Beth puts Mother’s slippers in front of tehfire. Meg light a lamp 4 mother, jo holds sippers to the fire, Amy got outo f Mother’s chair and Beth already did somthing.

Jo noticed Mother’s slippers weree old. b/c, so next, then, they all foightabout who would gt the nuuu slipets for Mohter for Chsirmas.

That happened, then Beth who was nice said all get Mother something diffent. Then tehy decided what 2 get moterh.

“GLOVS!!!1111!!1

LII

MEG.

the ISIS magazine

“Nu

shoes”

Jo

HaNDKERCHIEV” SEd beh t

Also they had 3 go soon b/c of all the work for the xmas play. “Im not doing it afeter this year” remarked Meg. then they practiced the play a

little bit. Amy=sopposed to faint but she failed. Still Beth thought it was funny 2 watch her tryso it was all worth something. (beth was frail btw) Then Jo & Meg practisd &was actually good. What Amy and Beth were wasnt important.. adfter they practice they laughed about something. it wasnt funny “Glad to find you so merry, my girls,” said a cheery voice at the door, and actors and audience turned to welcome a tall, motherly lady with a “can-I-help-you” look about her which was truly delightful. Ms.March tryes to clean up the mechanics of this story whenever possilbe. Right now she wore a lot of bad cloths the aoffsprang ktted. she loved them n e ways, kind of.

?

“Well, dearies, how have you got on today There was so much to do, getting the boxes ready to go tomorrow, that I didn’t come home to dinner. Did anyone call, Beth? How is your cold, Meg? Jo, you look tired to death. Come and kiss me, baby.” Thes were nice qhestions but no 1 understud, and it was a wast for her 2 even talk. N e ways they tryd to gett the room reday. Meg set the table. Jo broght chairs &but knockd stuff fover. What Beth did is a secret (sp?) and Amy did notihing which is hard to believe but yes its poignant/.

As they gathered about the table, Mrs. March said, with a particularly happy face, “I’ve got a treat for you after supper.” Imemidatly they al was happy, Beth clapped and that sign of healht was a b=ig deeale efor her, of course Jo who was manly she threw her napkini n the air nd said “YAit’s a LETer form FATHER” “Yes, a nice long letter. He is well, and thinks he shall get through the cold season better than we feared. He sends all sorts of loving wishes for Christmas, and an especial message to you girls,” said Mrs. March, patting her pocket as if she had got a treasure there. they reason they were happy =b/c they was no txting in Old times so Father comuminated by Male” and that was slow but meaningful, u can c where Amy got her poignancy from. Jo accie kdntlay threw he r bread on the floor. Beth left teh table & went to a corner of the room that was only her (beths) corner, where she coud sit & be frail in peac=. Meanwhilees MEg reminded every1 thet Father went to the Amy when he was 2 old 3 be drafted. When will Fahter come home???//?” qeuried Beth & Mother seaid “Not for many months, dear, unless he is sick. He will stay and do his work faithfully as long as he can, and we won’t ask for him back a minute sooner than he can be spared. Now come and hear the letter.” so They all went to the fire &that was warm.Mother sat in the big chair. Beth sat on the floor b/c (that wasnt bexacuse they didnt lether go on a chair, it was becuase the floor was warmer)..Meg and Amy went to the sides of the chair. jO just ewnet to the back of the chair. So Mother started reading the leter, it was nice, cheerful,loving& not mean,s ad, or mean. they end was this, it was about Meg, Jo Beth and aMY they letter was so long & boring . some of them aslep. Tehn Motehr explained that Father meant for thrm to not be obnoxisus . f course then the felt bad, Meg sead, I’m 2 vain, Am y said “I’m too selfis,’ Beth said “nothing”, Jo sad I’m to manly.

tHE edn

trinity 201 6

LIII

Y

500

“Lord how this world is given to lying.”

- FALSTAFF, HENRY IV PART 1 In honour of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, this term we asked entrants to respond to this quotation from one of Shakespeare’s most memorable creations, Falstaff. The quality and breadth of responses were excellent, and we would like to thank everyone who sent in entries.

Included in this section are the winner and runnersup, decided by our panel of judges, who were:

MICHAEL BILLINGTON the Guardian theatre critic JILL LEPORE Professor of American History at Harvard University and contributor to the New Yorker ANTHONY ANAXAGOROU award winning poet, prose writer, playwright, performer and educator PHOEBE ARNOLD senior communications officer at Full Fact DAVID LISTER arts editor at the Independent IMOGEN STUBBS actress and playwright ANIS MOJGANI multi-award winning spoken word poet and writer “All the writers shone in their own unique way, which is how it should be. I look forward to seeing all of them in the book shops.”IMOGEN STUBBS

N o t untrue and not unkind

As a general rule, both man and wife conducted their extramarital affairs in the marital bed.

They would do so, on average, three or four times a week. But despite this, neither ever discovered, or even suspected, the duplicities of the other.

Of course, the regularity and intensity of their copulation together was in no way hampered by any of this. Indeed, as strange as it is to tell, the once flatlining and then perceptibly drooping curve of the frequency/time graph of their lovemaking had risen steadily since the cessation of fidelities, which had occurred roughly at the same time, some ten years ago, some ten years after their wedding.

So now it happens like

“Captures clear,

the habitual lies translucent prose.”

And when it’s over she, delicately blushing, raises herself from him and falls back into the crumpled mound of duvet behind her. They lie like this for some moments, both, through heavy breaths and the afterglow of spasms, stewarding the denouements to their visions.

He strokes faint patterns into her stomach with the tip of a finger and switches out the light with the other hand. Now they alone are left.

In the darkness she crawls up to him and lays her arm around his middle, feeling contentment in the firm assurance of his body.

And when sleep takes over, their dreams are filled by one another, for they loved each other deeply.

of

the MICHAEL

faithless in BILLINGTON

“It really achieves the very difficult feat of telling a story in fewer words than most story tellers might desire. The story is poignant, rueful and rather lovely—and entire in itself.” IMOGEN STUBBS

B A L L

this, three or four times a week, when, after both have gargled and spat into the white porcelain of the washbowl, they wordlessly find themselves naked and writhing in the soft savannah of the bedside light. They work their way together before looking at one another for the last time and smiling. Tonight she’s seeing David, her mother’s plumber, as she has been doing most nights this month. She sees him hairless and glistening below her but is careful not to press against her husband’s bulbous torso. He, lying beneath her, rests his right hand on her thigh while the other runs lightly down and up her vertebrae, seeing the arched spine of his co-worker, Janine, riveting through her tight vest like a flute as she bends to load the photocopier. All the while both have their eyelids tightly shut, together like blind puppies.

T O M

And though they loved each other deeply, they had both been sleeping with other people for years. Among others, she had slept with her boss, her colleagues, the summer interns, several of the neighbours, her husband’s friends and, following one giggly family get-together, her brother-inlaw. For his part, he’d also slept with most of his colleagues and wife’s friends, as well as the woman who always got on the same carriage as him, the girl who worked at the supermarket and the lady who once asked him for money in the street, who he knew hated him. He’d even had the lack of imagination to sleep with his secretary.

S A R A H

V A N

C L E A V E

NINETEEN w i t h c h i l d

Roy doesn’t do a whole lot these days, though I don’t resent him for it. He doesn’t scream, doesn’t cry, just sort of looks at me like he knows something I don’t. I certainly have nothing against him, just don’t have a lot particularly for him, that’s all. And I know people try to pass that off as postpartum, but I think most of that mother-baby attachment stuff is a self-prescribed illusion to lessen the blow of switching lives, slipping into a new one that you wear for the rest of ever. But that’s okay, they say in long-distance relationships the key is to have an end point in sight, and some days there’s a lot of distance between Roy and me. So we’re counting down together to the end of ever.

And, you know, we trip along till then. I take him to the drive-in movies sometimes when I’ve saved enough quarters and we watch the back-to-back gory ones together. Sometimes the people in the next car over give me this disapproving look when they see Roy behind the wheel with me, so I hold him up and make him dance just to tease them a little bit. He gives them the stoic face while his limbs jiggle happy and I laugh and take some drags between mouthfuls of oil and popcorn.

On nights like that I want to kiss everything I see, leave little lipstick smirches on each piece of popcorn, each cigarette, each roll-down car window, and especially on Roy’s little chubby wrists. I hear that’s where your veins are closest to the surface, so I figure if I kiss him there, maybe some of my smile will seep into his bloodstream and he’ll grow up to be the world’s greatest comedian. I figure he’s saving up all the little chuckles now for one big avalanche of ha-ha-hee-hee that’ll set the world spinning just a little faster.

That’s what will happen.

“This stood out for me.

Where does the lie begin? Is it when the mother (I assumed a mother but perhaps other readers would not) says she doesn’t have anything against her son, but she doesn’t have a lot ‘for him’? This is soon proved to be a lie when we see how well she remembers every emotionally charged detail of their trip to the movies. Her love for him comes throbbing through the poem in the comforting self-delusion of the final soaring paragraph.” PHOEBE ARNOLD “Something about the voice of the mother narrator resonated with me. It felt simplE and soft, just like an actual person voicing these truths she wants so badly to be real. It was lovely.” ANIS MOJGANI

Lies my parents told me

How tooth

it

sharper is to

than have a

a serpent’s thankless child

The priest took up a handful of the muck and let it fall quietly to his bare feet. A patterned round of applause punctuated the air raid silence and the priest congratulated himself on his performance.

The Kids ran on. Running down and up and up and down until they reached the bank of the Thames. The shit brown water flecked seductively at the youths, lusting them in with promises of murk-ful play.

But as they prepared to submerge themselves, a great rumbling enveloped the sky. Two Boeing B29Superfor tress bombers came streaking through the clouds with a shared benevolent fury. The first unloaded a long, uninterrupted spur t of fine white powder which colonised itself upon the water and banks of the thames and dusted the children’s unwashed hair. The tailing Plane came with an equally impressive stream of water, showering, then drenching the populace of Beckton. Within an hour and twelve minutes the entire thames had turned white, nourished by the trans-atlantic milk, bursting at the banks with the lactose. The Kids played and drank all day, pausing only to vomit up the goodness back into the Thames. Whilst the adults around them collected the milk in whatever containers they could,(one repor t sees Mrs Phillips attempting to transpor t a crib full of milk back to her residence whilst crying profusely every time she spilt some) the Latch Key Kids simply played and drank and vomited, bathing in a juncture of irreverence.

“An extraordinary dystopian fantasy with an Anthony Burgess-like gift for language and a sharp sense of a despoiled landscape.” MICHAEL BILLINGTON “I found the imagery haunting and arresting. It has stayed with me.” IMOGEN STUBBS

B U L L

The kids (Merle, Maureen, Mark and Mark) were halted in their pursuit by what appeared to be a local, impromptu production of some play.

The priest (of animistic persuasion) was dressed head to toe in a blue t-shir t. He bore no shoes and his feet sunk into the slopes.

L U K E

The Latch Key Kids raced through the streets of Beckton chasing Oberst Edgar Petersen’s toddlering angels of love until they reached slag heap number four. They seemed to be coming roughly from square D2: Savage Gardens kids they were, as East as you can get. They climbed the dağ but as they climbed everything gave way. Slime and feet both tumbled loudly down, down into more of that greyishbrown up-ear th. The ascent, now legendary amongst the infant expeditionary movement (established 2nd June 1953 under a humble table in a royal sun) took place without oxygen or rope, moreover it was before the frenzied, arid snow of the 80’s turned it into the Beckton Alps. The ascent itself was a slight deviation on a well established route: the gang, if they’d allow that label, would set off from the savage gardens, (A name not befitting the plantlife, more tranquil in nature but names, as is their nature, often fail to capture their spawn), dwindle up Manor Way, pivot right at Windsor terrace, quick foot it past the rifle club and end up at that urban climbing frame, them hallowed Gasworks.

E M M A

L E V I N

Mar tin Taylor was building a robot.

He’d bought the kit online—from a website that promised to be discrete, discounted, and offer a 28-day returns policy (provided the device hadn’t imprinted). It was far too late for that. Mar tin had already given it a face. A flabby, ashen face, with the eyes too close together, as if they were huddling around the nose for warmth. It was a face that looked too fat to be convincingly sad. A face like a spiteful caricature.

It was Mar tin’s face.

He was building the robot in his university room. It was slow going, for two reasons. Number one, it was a tiny box-room, and there wasn’t really enough space for assembly. With all the par ts laid out, he ended up inser ting Bolt A into Socket B, stubbing his toe on Bracket C, and accidentally kicking Slat D out of the window. Number two, he had appalling co-ordination.

He was the sor t of boy who took two stones to kill one bird.

Which building

was

why the

he

was robot.

He inser ted Nub F into Alcove J, and wiped the sweat from his brow. In one sweeping, elegant motion he managed to knock Joist M into Piston L , bend the camshaft, and send the choke-valve flying. The team photo of the zero-g hockey squad that he had carefully photoshopped himself into fell to the floor.

The League of Minor D i s a p point m e n t s “I wouldn’t be so sure, old man.”

Mar tin’s father chuckled, and terminated the call.

He put down his phone, It was all that damned photo’s fault. and picked up his soldering iron. The zero-g He glued the battery pack to the hockey statue glared baseplate, and soldered the heatsink down at him from the to the fan. He really had no clue mantelpiece. He should what he was doing. He’d voided never have bought it from the warrantee ten times over in the that charity shop. Like he last minute. No matter, he mused, should never have told his son as long as it still worked. As long as he’d been a champion back in it was able to play zero-g hockey. his day. Like he should never have challenged his son to a Mar tin’s wristband vibrated. match when he came home for the He threw a duvet over the half- holidays. He couldn’t help himself. finished robot, and took the call. When Mar tin had rung him, so excited “How’s my little soldier” with the news that he had made the “I’m fine, dad” squad ‘just like his dad’, he’d panicked.

“Still on for tomorrow?” So he’d done the only thing he could “Absolutely.

Wouldn’t think of. He’d gone online, and bought a kit. miss it for the world.”

“You’re going to lose, you know.” Mister Taylor was building a robot.

“An unexpected story with a nice twist—a bit like a short film. It manages to capture two characters and their weaknesses and deceits admirably quickly.”

IMOGEN STUBBS “A curious, interesting fable that sees the building of a mechanical robot as a way of warding off life’s disappointments.”

MICHAEL BILLINGTON

Telford 6 John Stephens

C

BLUE Blu (after Wade Guyton) Nathan Caldecott Kate Elizabeth Miller Kate Elizabeth Miller Kate Elizabeth Miller

2-3+14 4 7 11

RED CREATIVE

Kate Elizabeth Miller Rachel Wilson Telford 2,4,6,7,9,18,20,21 John Stephens 1595 Paul Rosenstein Eton High Street Alice Rosen Angel of The North Dale Fry

15+32 19 20-24 25 28 29

YELLOW Indigo Wilde Cairo Danny Lopez Kate Elizabeth Miller Taj Mahal East Side Bjorn Christian Torrissen Alborz Mountains Nirara, Indigo Wilde, Nathan Caldecott America, Among The Thugs Case Jernigan

33+54 35 39 40 44-47 48-51

500 Lying (after Shakespeare) Nathan Caldecott Indigo Wilde The Bed Henri de Toulouse Looking Along Highway 99w David Falconer Pavement Lights Indigo Wilde, Nathan Caldecott

55+62 56 57 58-59 60-61

Treasures of Isis (after the Simpsons) Nathan Caldecott

64-65

N E D I T O R I A L

T H A N D I D D L Y A N K S F O R R E A D I N G N E I G H BOURINOS!